A Beautiful Family

Jennifer Trevelyan’s debut novel takes the classic New Zealand summer beach holiday and mixes it into a cocktail which is equal parts coming of age, familial discord, adultery, teenage antics, and murder mystery.

We join narrator Alix, the youngest child, and her family of four at a beach house on the Kapiti Coast in the 1980s for what’s meant to be a lazy summer filled with swimming and BBQs. The parents have drifted away from each other – the mother preoccupied with writing a book and a hinted-at affair, while the father tries to maintain a semblance of normality, undercut by his growing resentment at the family’s lack of enthusiasm. Vanessa, the older sister, sneaks out at night to party with other teens and shoplifts at the mall with a friend. That leaves Alix to search for the body of a young girl who drowned at the beach, alongside Kahu, a boy she befriends out of boredom and chance.

Add in the watchful neighbour who ingratiates himself with the family after rescuing Vanessa from a near-drowning, and you have a coming-of-age story that hinges on Alix’s pre-teen understanding of the world and the darker adult realities that surround her. Alix is forced to deal with these swirling feelings and events while realising that the security of her family isn’t as solid as she once believed.

Plot is almost secondary to mood and theme here; while the story does deliver some revelations, they unfold through Alix’s recollection of events rather than any traditional mystery structure. Those looking for a cut-and-dried denouement may feel short-changed, but Trevelyan instead offers a sadder, more fitting conclusion to her story.

A Beautiful Family has already been optioned for film, with Kiwi director Niki Caro presently attached, and one can see why. It’s a recognisably nostalgic slice of dark Kiwiana that swims in the ‘cinema of unease’ New Zealand storytelling is so renowned for.