Keri Hulme: Stonefish

Reviewed by SIOBHAN HARVEY

It's almost two decades since Keri Hulme's the bone people won that most prestigious of international literary awards, the Booker Prize. Since then, aside from the occasional anthologised story and poem, Hulme has chosen not to release any new work.

Into this 20-year silence comes Stonefish, a collection of short stories and poetry that have a recognisable Hulme ring to them: "thinking back" — as the first line declares — to the past. For Stonefish, though, this sense of familiarity acts like a double-edged sword, for if in this case familiarity doesn't breed contempt, it certainly breeds lament.

Clearly, if you were awestruck by the bone people, you'll enjoy Stonefish. The collection begins with the short story Floating Words, which encapsulates much of what was at the heart of Hulme's last novel: a misunderstood, isolated narrator who mulls over her own dysfunctions while immersing herself in alcohol and Maori mythology — in turns drinking mead, meeting a ghostly doppelganger and building a waka on which to set herself afloat.

Other short fiction in the collection such as Sometimes I Dream I'm Dying and Telling How The Stonefish Swims also revisit these typical Hulme preoccupations. The verse that intersperses these offerings often acts as a poetic reinterpretation of the subjects of the stories.

In part, then, we plunge into Stonefish in the delight that Hulme is back, is writing and publishing. But in part too, the fact that this new collection bears such a strong resemblance to the bone people makes us feel as if we're revisiting the writer where last we left her: 1985.

When one thinks of any writer who won any literary prize (international or New Zealand) 20 years ago — Peter Carey, Witi Ihimaera, Patricia Grace, Maurice Gee — to read their latest output is to find work that contains new, vibrant ideas and developments, fresh tangents, distinctly different characters crafted around the core of the author's unique prose.

With Stonefish, though, we're denied a sense of authorial progress or a feeling that Hulme continues to challenge us with new ways of perceiving our modern world.

And this is sad for, ultimately, Stonefish stands then as a reminder of Hulme's 20-year invisibility, of what might have been, and what might still be, if Stonefish isn't an instance of rare output, but the beginning of a succession of releases.

* Siobhan Harvey is an Auckland writer and tutor.

* Huia, $34.95