The Hut Builder

Boden Black grows up in Fairlie in the early 1940s, in a grey, silent house where his mother is still lost in grief for the sons she had before him, and he finds a second family across the street. When Dudley, a neighbour, takes him on a drive across the hills to the Mackenzie Country, the snow-covered plains fill him with joy and prompt his first poem. He later trains as a butcher, falls for poetry after buying an anthology in Christchurch, and spends time with climbers putting up a hut high on Mount Cook. Snowed in there with a reserved man named Walter, he swaps life stories with him. He reaches the top of the mountain alongside Edmund Hillary, yet keeps the people closest to him at arm's length.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Nature, Coming of age (assigned by AI)

Set in

New Zealand

First published

2010

Author's age

47 when first published

ISBN

9780143205067 (Penguin, New Zealand)