cover image The Bone People

The Bone People

Keri Hulme. Penguin Books, $15 (450pp) ISBN 978-0-14-008922-6

Winner of the 1985 Booker Prize, this novel by a New Zealander of Maori, Scottish and English ancestry focuses on three peopleone Maori, one European and one of mixed bloodwho are locked together in animosity and love. Although Hulme sometimes is sidetracked into self-indulgent verbiage, ""she has abundant, enticing stories to tell of culturally split lives,'' PW found. (October)