“I wanted him as ordinarily complex and normally simple.” A mind-bending line that would have made Lewis Carroll giggle with giddy delight, this father’s wish for his child cuts deep in Keri Hulme’s novel “The Bone People.” The 1984 Booker-prize winner depicts a collection of damaged characters that love deeply and punch ruthlessly.

             Joe Gillayley, an alcoholic prone to physical outbursts of abuse, struggles to maintain control of his adoptive son Simon (aka Clare aka Haimona aka ‘the Urchin’) who he found washed ashore and on the brink of death. Joe’s life intertwines with a woman named Kerewin, a reclusive artist who shuns intimacy, when his son infiltrates her circular tower perched miles away from the nearest neighborhood and overlooking the sea.

            Simon Peter, a mute, is by far the most fascinating character in the novel. He is masterpiece in a broken body, surrounded by broken people, found on a beach by a broken ship. He teeters between being incredibly strong or willingly seduced, mentally insane or uncannily intelligent. Just when you believe you have deciphered the Morse code of his emotional landscape, another mercurial tantrum shatters your conceptual framework. While his body is as gnarled as his relationships with the outside world, he seems unable to hate. He manipulates people to his will through sheer steadfast determination, which usually ends up in one of two ways: beatings or hugs. He communicates with sign language of his own design and, on rare and unwilling occasions, he uses a notepad and pen. He also smokes almost as much the Caterpillar in Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland: “He lies back in the strong circle of his father’s arms, and blows a smoke plume at her with calm expertise.” Hulmes original and gripping portrait of Simon saves the novel from plodding at a dreary tempo.

            Kerewin, a virgin who has no “sexual urge or appetite,” believes herself to be a “neuter.” Even the slightest of human contact provokes discomfort: “Something touches her thigh. She spins around, viciously quick, her palms rigid and ready as knives. The urchin has sprouted by her side, asking questions with all his fingers.” The feral quality of Simon and his mysterious past intrigues Kerewin, allowing her to slowly care for the capricious boy and even the alcohol dampened sensitivities of his foster father.

           Joe’s sweet kisses and sharp uppercuts for Simon seem to stem from two disparate personalities. Their relationship flits between violence and love more often than not, but for Simon, “Home is Joe, Joe of the hard hands but sweet love.”

         “The Bone People” is a jawbreaker of a book-the 500 plus page novel requires dedication to finish but is worth the effort. Hulmes writing is the kind that forces readers to surrender to her stream-of-consciousness with the hopes of reaping rewards later in the novel. Her narration shifts between the man, woman, and boy, and she has a propensity for injecting poetry into her prose. Hulme has been quoted as saying she writes “from a visual base and a gut base rather than sieving it through the mind.” She makes a reader’s brain dart in many directions: some happy, some grim, and some cruel. Her lack of planning affects her plot, which often feels poorly conceived. The novel would have been improved with a tighter structure.

        While no one in the novel is “ordinarily complex and normally simple,” at times that quote becomes the perfect desire for this book (but only for a second). There are rewards to be gained by submitting to Hulme’s stream of consciousness; her characters will stay with you longer than the 50 pages it takes to surrender to her unique literary style.