In Jennifer Trevelyan’s A Beautiful Family, we start as we mean to go on: viewing a family in the 1980s through the lens of the distance that exists between them. Our protagonist is 10 years old, and to her the world is only as large as her family, consisting of her 15-year-old sister, her secret-book-writing mother and her adventurous and pragmatic father. We travel with the family two hours north of their home in Wellington to a holiday home that presents as a place where inevitable coming-of-age changes are in store for the two sisters.
But there are other threads introduced early on in the story that involve her parents and their motivations, which force multiple plot lines to cross and push the pace of the novel forward to its devastating – yet somehow satisfying – conclusion.
Trevelyan uses a skilled pen to both peel back the curtain of what our protagonist sees, alongside the true meaning behind those things often shielded from us during adolescence. We learn everyone else’s name, including those of new and old summer friends, questionable neighbours and passersby, before we learn the protagonist’s, which comes at a much later, crucial, point in the book. It is with this device that the novel stretches its legs, leaving the reader shrouded in some mystery but not completely – hinting only at what could be happening around the child and to the adults in her life, without her being able to confirm it herself with her limited knowledge of life thus far.
The themes introduced are vast, but only lightly touched upon: dishonesty, lust, grief and womanhood. Although frustrating at times, this mechanism works by reminding us that the narrative is being filtered through a child’s eyes; so some things must remain obscured until it is time for a lesson to be learned, or some decisive action to be taken.
It is in the decision-making of the protagonist – amid the moments of chaos slowly increasing around her – that the reader is taken forward into dangerous mayhem, inspired by the inner workings of a child’s logic. These moments are masterfully written, angling tension with fear and desire for retribution to be found, turning our at first hapless protagonist into something of a heroine to root for by the end.
Read: Book review: Of Monsters and Mainframes, Barbara Truelove
Communicating the gaps in a family dynamic paired with significant plot points can be a challenging feat, but Trevelyan does it with enjoyable flair in A Beautiful Family, painting a multilayered narrative that must be devoured in one sitting.
A Beautiful Family, Jennifer Trevelyan
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781761472015
Format: Paperback
Pages: 336pp
Publication date: 3 June 2025
RRP: $32.99
