Lots of hype came with this book, a first novel by a Wellington writer and IIML grad Jennifer Trevelyan: massive publicity, a high profile agent, a two book deal, international sales, film rights. All of it, I think, very well deserved. It’s the story told by a ten year old girl of a summer holiday at the beach. They are a beautiful family, but somehow there is a sense of danger everywhere. Danger either for our girl, her sister, her mum or dad – risk everywhere, some obvious, some insidious. Enough to keep you anxious for the entire book. I had that feeling of early motherhood where I was constantly sweeping the environment for things that might damage my child. Here, at this seemingly wholesome kiwi bach, there are things to watch out for: a difficult sea with rips and big waves, a mother not watching her children because she has another agenda, two sisters looking/not looking out for each other, a teenage hangout at the lifesaving club, bad choices, a creepy voyeur next door, a missing girl whose name is carved into a wall. A swampy lagoon.
I spent many summers in Kapiti growing up. It was the most innocuous of places, with free-range kids, a huge exposed expanse of beach, old people, the bored youth making their own fun. By the mid 1980s, when this book is set, there was nothing remotely threatening about Kapiti. And yet in the past year: Strays and Waifs by Mandy Hager, The Mires by Tina Makareti, Sea Change by Jenny Pattrick, Delirious by Damien Wilkins and now A Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevelyan suggest there is a complicated depth to this land. Perhaps its disturbing history still bubbles through the sand, blood on the beaches, Te Rauparaha on the Island and whalers with their spears. A feeling of being watched. Perhaps the other side of life was always there, but as a child I simply didn’t see it, just as in this story our child narrator doesn’t see the shadows that start to terrify me.
Our girl, with her insular nuclear family, teams up with a boy from a large and gregarious whanau, and they entertain themselves on a hunt for clues to solve an old mystery. A neighbour watches their garden from his balcony next door as they sunbathe and turn cartwheels. The kids poke sticks around in the sand of the beach and the murk of a lagoon that runs like an evil repository of sin at the back of the houses. They’re looking for the bones of a girl drowned a year before; maybe she washed up. Any bleached white stick might be a bone. It’s creepy and childish all jumbled in together.
This is most definitely a hook book. There are things that are just a little bit off from the beginning, the mother’s wanderings, the sister’s nocturnal exploits, the strange reception to a chance meeting of friends, the threat of the sea. The little things gain weight and develop, get complicated, might lead to this or that, and the consequences of every action multiplies and waits for a resolution. Within a couple of chapters there is no going back.
Like life, not everything resolves neatly. No one goes home unchanged. The fallout will haunt the characters all their lives. How does a beautiful family move on after a summer holiday like that?
Hooking, chilling, tense. A great bit of storytelling. Hats off for Jennifer Trevelyan!
Cristina Sanders' blog 