Reviewed by Wendy Lipke
Set in the north island of New Zealand, Jennifer Trevelyan’s novel, A Beautiful Family, with the accompanying words ‘The summer that changed everything’, is all about relationships within the family unit and the outside ones that impact on it.
What made this book unusual for me was that the story is told from the perspective of the ten-year-old younger daughter of this family, giving a different insight into what is happening. It also highlights the point of view of the last child who often feels seen and not heard and the changing relationship between sisters as one of them reaches adolescence.
Usually, this family would spend their holiday away from Wellington alone giving them family time together. But this year the mother had insisted that they should go to a particular holiday place where there would be many others. On one side of their holiday home was the beach and on the other a large lagoon.
It was here that the compact family unit seemed to splinter. They became as individuals with their own interests. The mother, who was supposed to be watching the children on the beach, would take off on long walks on her own. The teenage sister gravitated to her own age group while the dad seemed happy at the house. The youngest member of the family found a friend in a young Māori boy and together they set out to solve one mystery only to find a new one.
The man next door makes our narrator uncomfortable, and this situation is reinforced throughout the story. One assumes that this situation is heightened when it is revealed that a young girl about the same age had gone missing before in this area and never been found.
There is tension throughout the whole storyline.
It is quite obvious that the adults often forget that young children are like sponges and observe and take in more than they are given credit for. Yet at the same time the reader is reminded how young the narrator is by the many words and concepts she does not understand. At various stages of the story the reader feels they know more than the narrator. However, she is very conscious of the change in dynamics within the family. She was very aware that, during that summer in 1985, many lies were stacked around her (159).
It was interesting to read the thought processes of such a young narrator as she tried to analyse what was happening within her family and deal with her own concerns. At one stage she decides that although things were not right, the family was not doomed yet, but not exactly saved either. She was finding the situation confusing because she had been raised, up until now, where things had run smoothly, predictably and carefully but, in this summer, everything seemed to be out of kilter.
With so many tensions building throughout the story, it is a bit disappointing that the ending is so abrupt leaving many questions unanswered. What happened to the little girl who was lost? What is going to happen now within the family once they get home? What is the story behind the finding in the lagoon?
With a background in photography and children’s publishing, Jennifer Trevelyan is now a full-time writer living in Wellington, New Zealand. This is her first published work, though not the first book she has written.
Liane Moriarty, an established author, writes that A Beautiful Family, by Jennifer Trevelyan, is ‘An extraordinary, exquisitely written debut’. I found it interesting, believable, worrying and delightfully different in its presentation.
A Beautiful Family
(2025)
by Jennifer Trevelyan
Allen & Unwin
ISBN:978-1-76147-201-5
$32.99; 336pp