SOURCE: A review of The Bone People, in Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 62, No. 3, Summer, 1986, p. 91.

In the following review, the critic contends that aspects of The Bone People's unique New Zealand cultural setting are sacrificed for a more universal tale.

This startling first novel [The Bone People] by a 38-year-old Maori woman from New Zealand has already won the New Zealand Book Award, England's Booker Prize for fiction, and Mobil Corporation's Pegasus Prize for foreign literature—plus extravagant praise from the critics. Hulme's story is simple, perhaps shockingly plain, yet almost bottomless in its emotional depth. A reclusive Maori woman (a somewhat autobiographical figure), bitter at the world yet ironically made wealthy by a lottery, has her steely exterior pierced by an orphaned, psychologically-disturbed boy who, though of normal intelligence, refuses to speak for some mysterious reason in his past. The boy's foster father, a rough-hewn Maori...