The Bone People (Booker Prize Winner 1985)

"The Bone People" is a love story. It begins when a mute six-year-old, full of blasting hurt and strange charm, wanders off the beach and into the home of a despairing artist. Kerwin has given up everything but drinking, thinking and fishing, but the arrival of the boy Simon, and later on, of his Maori foster-father Joe, drags them all into the gyre of possibilities. Cruel, funny, ardent and beautiful, "The Bone People" is a powerful and visionary New Zealand fable.