The Bone People by Keri Hulme

So one day Will, the father of the little boy I babysit, picked me up as per usual, and, upon his noticing the books that accompanied me, we began talking about what he had read in college. He told me he had loved his World Lit class, and when we got to his house he pulled this book off a shelf, saying, "I've read this three times. It's really great; it's about these people in New Zealand who go to this tower where this woman lives and they're all kind of troubled and they sort of help each other...well, you'll just have to read it." So I did.

Kerewin Holmes is a part-Maori self-sufficient financially independent painter-reader-writer living in a custom-built tower on the New Zealand coast. One day she comes home and discovers a thin, blond, mute boy in her living room. She finds that his name is Simon, and she contacts his father Joe and returns him to his home. Joe invites her over for dinner the next night, she reciprocates, and soon all their lives are intertwined. Kerewin learns that Joe adopted Simon after he washed up on shore one night, the lone survivor of a shipwreck, and that Joe's wife and son died shortly after, leaving the two alone. She also finds that, when drunk, Joe punishes Simon severely, though Simon feels he deserves it and so it just makes him love his father more. But one night Joe's blows send him to the hospital. Months of soul-searching, healing, and repentance find them all reconciled in the end.

The book is altogether strikingly individual. Literate allusions abound in the mind of Kerewin, who is well-read and familiar with French and Latin, as well as fluent in English and Maori. She has a keen ear for language and sound that becomes apparent as the sometimes stream-of-consciousness narrative follows her mental rabbit-paths of rhyme and word-play. She is clever, though at times a little too precious, like when she refers to herself as "Sherlock" - her last name is Holmes - and marvels that she never came up with that before. The distinct culture of New Zealand plays a major part in the individuality of the novel. Maori words are interspersed between the audibly accented English: "Berloody cheeky, mate."

An outré spirituality harbored by the characters pervades the book. They combine Maori spritualism with a brand of missionary Christianity and puerile superstitious mysticism in a confusing conglomeration of beliefs. Kerewin keeps a book of religious writings that includes Buddhist and Hindu texts among her own musings, as well as select books of the Bible. Simon sees auras around people, and Joe is visited by an ostensibly prophetic old Maori chief.

Though things eventually come right, Simon and Joe's relationship forms a terribly sick situation, and it makes the book an uncomfortable one. Kerewin's cold seclusion, too, is unnatural and undesirable, though also rectified by the denouement. The book is engrossing, but not necessarily something I'd want to read more than once. So why did Will - Cubs fan, mathematics major, Mac enthusiast, Guitar Hero champ - read it thrice?