Perpetually tired

[This is a revision of a review I first posted to 50books_poc on December 1st, 2010. It has been edited for clarity.]

I thought I'd read this book over ten years ago, when it was given to me by a teacher, and I'm sure I started to read it, but I have a feeling I didn't finish. That or I blocked it out. Don't let me get ahead of myself—this is a well-written and absorbing novel. But it hurts. It's long, or it feels long, and I found myself always trying to get through it faster, eager both to know what would happen and to escape the brutality of it.

We are introduced to Kerewin, an independently wealthy artist who lives a hermit-like existence in a self-built Tower in New Zealand. By chance she meets Simon, a young, troubled boy who can't speak, and his foster father Joe, who took him in when Simon was washed ashore in a shipwreck. A three-way friendship begins to blossom among these very different, very wounded people.

This section of the book is inviting, unfolding slowly, rich with setting and personality. Kerewin Holmes is overtly a self-insert for Keri Hulme, which I think confused me when I first tried to read the book, thinking only bad authors did this. But Hulme is a gifted writer who seems able to deconstruct herself wholeheartedly, honestly, with the same sympathy and ruthlessness she uses to create other characters. The only problem I had with Kerewin as a character is that she shares Hulme's lyrical poetic voice to such an extent that you wonder why Kerewin is not also a professional writer, and why visual art has been substituted instead.

Joe and Simon are also skillfully drawn characters, though I was uncomfortable with Simon at times, initially disliking him and not relating to why Kerewin was drawn to him. The sections that are written from his point of view helped a lot, and I wish there had been more of them earlier.

This could almost have been the whole story, just a story of three people reaching out to one another, and the novel would have been half the length. I think it could have been good that way. But even in the early pages, there are hints of violence and unrest; animals are killed often in this book, for food, for pest control. The violence is lingered over, not sadistically or in pleasure, but in grim fascination. We are told that Joe and Simon have a secret, not just the secret of Simon's origins (which is also explored, but as a bit of an afterthought) but something much worse, and more everyday.

The secret, which isn't a secret if you've read the back of the book, is that Joe beats his child.

detailed spoilers

So I knew that going in. But what surprised me (and this is why I'm pretty sure I didn't finish the book the first time) is that Kerewin's efforts to reform him go in vain, and that Joe beats Simon into a coma and is sent to prison, leaving the three of them to go their separate ways for most of the remainder of the book. On their separate journeys, Kerewin and Joe are cleansed of their respective ailments—Kerewin's cancer and Joe's violence—quite literally by magic. I have no objection to magical realism, but in this instance it didn't satisfy me, not in either case.

I was skeptical that Kerewin would really change as much as she did by the end of the book, even after her dark night of the soul followed by a miraculous cure. The reunion with her family feels hasty and forced.

I was VERY skeptical that Joe would ever be safe around Simon, even after his spiritual reconnection with his country as a Māori man. I didn't doubt that the land would try to heal him, and I didn't doubt that he would believe it worked, but after all we'd seen of him, I just felt his illness was too strong. It's suggested tht he should stay in the sacred place he discovers and be its guardian, and I would have bought into that as an appropriate ending for him. But he doesn't do it, and I didn't understand that. It felt like a pulled punch, letting him off the hook for his choices.

I thought Hulme gave Simon the short end. He doesn't get a mystical realization, and the lopsidedness of that really felt off to me. It's like he only exists so the adults can find themselves, which is pretty awful and trite after everything he goes through. I know some people read this as Christian symbolism, with Simon as Christ being tortured for the sins of his parents (virginal, indeed asexual Kerewin, and Joseph the foster father). If so, all I can say is it didn't work for me.

I was also put off by the ambivalence towards queerness in the book. Kerewin's asexuality is depicted as acceptable, but Joe's discomfort with his bisexuality never gets a resolution, and minor queer characters are stereotypes.

I wish I could recommend this book because the language is really lovely, but I don't think I'm quite there. I think Hulme does well in portraying shades of gray, in allowing Joe to be both monstrous and human. I was with her right up to the end, but I couldn't accept the ending she provided for the characters, precisely because it went away from the grayness and was too black-and-white. This is such a long, languid novel—what was her hurry in the last few chapters? Everything is wrapped up far too quickly and neatly. I didn't buy it, even with her assurance that the end is also a beginning. I didn't believe that this new beginning would turn out any different from the beginning on page one.

I also wish I knew why my teacher wanted me to read this and what she hoped I would get out of it. Unfortunately I have zero memory of whatever she told me about it, so that's something we'll never know!