Want to participate in Shelf Control? Here’s how: Have you read any books set in New Zealand? Any you’d recommend? Please let me know!

I haven’t read much fiction set in New Zealand, and I’m fascinated by the sound of the story! I’ve been hearing about The Bone People for years, and have been told repeatedly that it’s a must-read. I bought it years ago, probably at a library sale (like so many of the books on my shelves!). Winner of both a Booker Prize and Pegasus Prize for Literature, The Bone People is a work of unfettered wordplay and mesmerizing emotional complexity. Out of this unorthodox trinity Keri Hulme has created what is at once a mystery, a love story, and an ambitious exploration of the zone where Maori and European New Zealand meet, clash, and sometimes merge.

As Kerewin succumbs to Simon’s feral charm, she also falls under the spell of his Maori foster father Joe, who rescued the boy from a shipwreck and now treats him with an unsettling mixture of tenderness and brutality. One night her solitude is disrupted by a visitor-a speechless, mercurial boy named Simon, who tries to steal from her and then repays her with his most precious possession. In a tower on the New Zealand sea lives Kerewin Holmes, part Maori, part European, an artist estranged from her art, a woman in exile from her family. What it’s about (synopsis via Goodreads) : See the guidelines at the bottom of the post, and jump on board! Want to join in? Shelf Control posts go up every Wednesday. Pick a book you own but haven’t read, write a post about it (suggestions: include what it’s about, why you want to read it, and when you got it), and link up! For more info on what Shelf Control is all about, check out my introductory post, here. Shelf Control is a weekly celebration of the unread books on our shelves. Welcome to Shelf Control - an original feature created and hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies.

The bone people review