Characters
- Kerewin Holmes - Kerewin is a reclusive artist who is running away from her past. She is a gifted painter who has suffered painter’s block since winning a lottery, building her tower and falling out with her family. At the beginning of the novel she has lost direction in her life and wants all other people to leave her alone. However, after becoming involved in Simon and Joe's lives she learns to heal her life.
- Joe Gillayley - Joe is the adoptive father of Simon. He is very intelligent and spiritual, but blinded in his judgement, particularly in relation to his raising of Simon, by his alcoholism. Joe seems to both love and respect Kerewin, but also compete with her. He is deeply scarred by his wife's death, contributing to his alcoholism.
- Simon P Gillayley - Simon is a mute, highly intelligent child with an immense interest in details of the world around him. Simon has a deep attachment to both Joe and Kerewin, but shows his love in odd ways because of his strange past. He exhibits a disregard for personal property. He is isolated from others by his inability to speak, as others mistake his muteness for stupidity. Simon refers to himself as Clare or Claro.
His life before meeting Joe is never satisfactorily explained. It is hinted that he was abused before meeting Joe - Joe refers to seeing strange marks on him when he met him for the first time. Simon is also upset by certain things, for example, needles, having his hair cut, or hearing the French language spoken. (It's likely that his birth father was a dissolute Irish heroin addict who was involved in drug smuggling.)
Read more about this topic: The Bone People
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.”
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which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.”
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“The Nature of Familiar Letters, written, as it were, to the Moment, while the Heart is agitated by Hopes and Fears, on Events undecided, must plead an Excuse for the Bulk of a Collection of this Kind. Mere Facts and Characters might be comprised in a much smaller Compass: But, would they be equally interesting?”
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