Kiwi bach mystery novel snares global publishing rights
An idyllic summer holiday on the Kāpiti coast inspired Wellington writer Jennifer Trevelyan’s debut novel.
Once it was finished, Jennifer Trevelyan thought what would a confident person do? So, she sent it to the world's biggest literary agent.
Superstar UK publisher Felicity Blunt signed it up straight away, sold worldwide publishing rights and organised a major film deal with internationally acclaimed New Zealand film producers Niko Caro and Finola Dwyer.
The novel, A Beautiful Family is a coming-of-age tale blended with mystery and suspense and is set during a typical ‘80s Kiwi bach holiday.
An idyllic summer holiday on the Kapiti coast inspired Wellington writer Jennifer Trevelyan’s debut novel.
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Trevelyan’s pluck in sending it to Blunt met with a dose of luck, she told RNZ’s Nine to Noon.
“She's told me since that about three weeks after I sent it, she just turned to her assistant and said we should clear out our inbox. And they went through and found it,” Trevelyan says.
She was heading out for brunch with her husband when an email arrived saying Blunt liked the first three chapters and wanted to read the rest, she says.
She rushed home, frantically polished the rest of the manuscript, sent it off and was signed within the week.
The book is set in 1985, she says, with the novel’s central character a 10-year-old girl called Alex.
“She goes away with her family for a summer holiday, and she meets a boy on the beach, and they become friends and decide to try and solve a local mystery together.”
Meanwhile a “creepy” man is staying at the beach house next door, she says.
Alex and her friend decide to try and solve the mystery of a girl who went missing years previously, presumed drowned. The setting is inspired by a similar family holiday Trevelyan took, she says.
“I had this wonderful summer when I was 10, which was 1985 on the Kāpiti coast.
“It's just seared into my memory. I'm not sure why. I had a great time. We did stay in a beach house, very similar to the one I've described, and there was actually a creepy man staying in the house next door. And the landscape is just so incredible, it's beautiful, but it has this underlying sense of danger about it.”
The strength of the 10-year-old narrator’s voice and the historic detail in the novel appealed to film maker Caro, she says.
“She talked about how the book is so specific with all its detail, but that specificity makes it universal. It makes the story, the nostalgia I suppose, as well that we all feel for our childhood holidays wherever they were.”
A Beautiful Family is published by Allen & Unwin in New Zealand and has just had its global release.
