| Description |
450 pages ; 20 cm |
| Contents |
Prologue -- End at the beginning -- Season of the day moon: Portrait of a sandal -- Feelers -- Leaps in the dark -- Sea round: Place to sleep by day -- Spring tide, neap tide, ebb tide, flood -- Ka Tata Te Po -- Lighting struck tower: Mirrortalk -- Nightfall -- Candles in the wind -- Feldapart sinews, breaken bones: Kaumatua and the broken man -- Boy by is own -- Woman at the wellspring of death -- Epilogue moonwater picking. |
| Summary |
This unusual novel, set in New Zealand, concentrates on three people: Kerewin Holmes, a part-Maori painter who has chosen to isolate herself in a tower she built from lottery winnings; Simon, a troubled and mysterious little boy; and Joe Gillayley, the Maori factory worker who is Simon's foster father. Elements of Maori myth and culture are woven into the novel's exploration of the passions and needs that bind these three people together, for good or ill. It's not easy reading, but the story is compelling despite its stylistic eccentricities and great length. The novel is the winner of the Pegasus Prize. |
| Subject |
Māori (New Zealand people) -- Fiction.
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Commitment (Psychology) -- Fiction.
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Racially mixed people -- Fiction.
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Social isolation -- Fiction.
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Women painters -- Fiction.
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Mute persons -- Fiction.
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New Zealand fiction.
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Shipwrecks -- Fiction.
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Widowers -- Fiction.
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Boys -- Fiction.
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| Genre/Form |
Psychological fiction.
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Love stories.
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| ISBN |
0140089225 paperback $7.95 |
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9780140089226 paperback |
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