by Keri Hulme
First published 1986
A mother's hand slips and her son suffers the consequence. This moment joins other fragments of life in New Zealand, where sheep move across hills under watchful eyes and whales breach distant waters. The stories move between sleeping visions and waking reality. Herders tend their flocks while families navigate the small cruelties and tenderness that bind them together. Violence erupts suddenly, then recedes like tide from shore. Children grow up marked by what their parents intended and what happened instead. Dreams bleed into daylight hours, carrying messages the dreamer struggles to decode. Each story captures people caught between what they hope for and what they must endure. Hulme writes of Maori experience with unflinching attention to how families wound and heal each other.
Genres: literary-fiction, family-life, 20th-century, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: dreams-and-reality, family-secrets
Setting: New Zealand
Period: 20th Century, 21st Century
239 pages · Paperback · Victoria University Press