Jennifer Trevelyan, A BEAUTIFUL FAMILY: A Novel
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Book to Zibi.
[0:06]Formerly, moms don't have time to read books.
[0:08]In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors
[0:14]and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time.
[0:18]As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously a podcaster, I get a comprehensive
[0:24]look at everything that's coming up and spend my time curating the best books, so you
[0:29]don't have to.
[0:30]Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests, like I do, every single
[0:35]day.
[0:36]For more information, go to zibimedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens.
[0:44]Jennifer Chovellian is the author of a beautiful family, a novel, with a background in photography
[0:50]and children's publishing.
[0:51]Jennifer is now a full-time writer, living in Wellington, New Zealand, with her husband,
[0:55]son, daughter, dog, and cat, when not at her writing desk, Jennifer can be found in the garden.
[1:00]Welcome, Jennifer, thank you so much for coming on to talk about a beautiful family,
[1:04]a novel.
[1:05]Congratulations.
[1:06]Thank you.
[1:07]Thank you so much for having me.
[1:08]It's my pleasure.
[1:10]Welcome from New Zealand.
[1:12]Why don't you tell listeners what a beautiful family is about?
[1:16]A beautiful family is in 1985 on the capital coast of New Zealand, and it's sort of coming
[1:23]of age mystery novel about a little girl who goes away on a holiday with her family.
[1:30]And she, her friends are a boy on the beach, and they decide to try and solve a local
[1:35]mystery.
[1:36]But in the meantime, things are happening in her family that are making her very uncomfortable
[1:42]and her mother's behaving strangely her sister, that was some people that she's not sure
[1:47]of are very trustworthy.
[1:49]And meanwhile, there is a man staying in the next store who's pushing everything that
[1:54]they do.
[1:55]And she's the only one who seems to be aware of him.
[1:57]Yeah, he creeps me out.
[2:00]Yeah, he's supposed to creep you out.
[2:02]That's good.
[2:03]Yeah.
[2:04]There were actually many times, and I don't do well with like being scared, but there were
[2:08]a few times where particular when they scratched away and could see the name under it.
[2:14]I was like, oh my god, I'm not giving anything away, but I was like, oh my gosh, so that's
[2:21]great.
[2:22]That's great.
[2:23]Yeah.
[2:24]Yeah.
[2:25]And also, I was reading the book and thinking, wait a minute, I was 10 years old in 1986.
[2:30]Like this could have been me with my Walkman and, yeah, thing and knowing how it felt
[2:35]like lost the Walkman and just all of that dependence on music at that time, especially
[2:41]because there was no social media, there was no other escape.
[2:44]Music and books, right?
[2:45]That was like music and books.
[2:46]Yeah, now I was 10 and 1985 and my Walkman was my world.
[2:51]And I had one take to sit and it was actually Billy Joel.
[2:54]I think it was an innocent man.
[2:57]And my sister had her take to sit and which was when, and we were just going around in
[3:01]our own little world all the time.
[3:03]Yeah.
[3:04]It was very easy to remember what that was like and sort of seared into my memory.
[3:08]Yes.
[3:09]Especially the older sister part, too, where you're growing up, but then you're seeing
[3:15]someone close to you grow up and not sure that you're supposed to be following in those exact
[3:20]same tracks.
[3:21]Yeah.
[3:22]I mean with the mascara and hiding it into the bed and sort of like throwing it out
[3:27]the window and all that and not knowing, I mean, you reflect so beautifully the interior
[3:32]life of your main character and how she's like, I don't want to rat my sister out for
[3:37]the many things that her sister does.
[3:39]And yet she knows it's wrong.
[3:41]So how do you handle it when you notice it's fairly have the words?
[3:44]Yes.
[3:45]You still want to get in trouble yourself?
[3:46]No.
[3:47]Thank you.
[3:48]Yeah.
[3:49]It's quite well behaved, but I still worry about them a lot.
[3:52]And I think maybe the youngest state does fall on the youngest a little bit.
[3:55]You're sort of observing everybody and you're, you know, everyone's secrets, because
[4:01]you're a little bit invisible.
[4:02]People forget you're there.
[4:04]So I think Alex worries a lot and wants to protect the nest of it at the same time.
[4:10]Well, they're driving each other crazy because it's just that time and life where you're
[4:13]sibling for our parents.
[4:16]And she doesn't want to get in trouble herself, so as you say, yeah, there's a lot of tension
[4:20]for Alex.
[4:22]And Alex also is at the stage of her life and you wrote about this in such a unique way
[4:28]where you said she used to be able to smile and everyone would smile back in her because
[4:32]she was so cute.
[4:33]And she's clearly reached the point in her life where she smiles and people don't smile
[4:37]back in her in the same way.
[4:38]Yeah.
[4:39]Yeah, distinctly remember that moment where I wasn't that cute little girl anymore.
[4:43]Yeah.
[4:44]Yeah.
[4:45]If you are the youngest and you are, everyone thinks you're cute.
[4:48]And then you sort of trade on that for a little while.
[4:51]And then I can remember that going away and you're entering this different phase.
[4:56]And yeah, you sort of want to hold onto it at the same time, you're excited to grow
[5:00]up and be a bit more independent.
[5:04]How, how many sisters do you have and what's your age difference?
[5:07]I have two older sisters and the eldest is seven years older than me and the middle is four
[5:13]years older.
[5:15]And I think there was, there was a time when the middle sister and me were really tight
[5:20]and people would mistake us for twins because I was like, and then all of a sudden, and
[5:24]we were buddies, you know, and we would get really excited on her morning and all that
[5:28]kind of normal stuff.
[5:29]And then all of a sudden, we weren't buddies anymore and she was going off.
[5:34]And I remember it because we stayed in a beach house very similar to the one I described.
[5:38]She was going off every day on her bike with her friends and here's a little bit of grief
[5:43]like, oh, what happened to that?
[5:46]And I was still the little kid that was excited about Christmas and swimming and all these
[5:50]sort of, you know, really interesting things.
[5:52]So yeah, definitely some experience there.
[5:55]I feel like I'm having the same grief now with my youngest of four who is like wanting
[6:00]to go with his friends all the time.
[6:02]And I'm like, I know this is developmentally appropriate, but like, can't we just settle?
[6:07]Yeah.
[6:08]Yeah.
[6:09]Yeah.
[6:10]Yeah.
[6:11]Oh, that's the gym time.
[6:13]Yeah.
[6:14]Well, you also wrote so beautifully about what grief looks like when you have Alex interact
[6:21]with the mother of the child, Catherine, who's been lost in the field and what it looks
[6:28]like when she sees Alex as a girl about the same age, realizes it's not her daughter.
[6:34]You don't have to even have to say all of this.
[6:36]In the way, describe the emotions flashing over her face, you tell the whole story with
[6:43]just the way she looks and the way she, like, has to lean back and sort of catch herself
[6:48]and then like, you know, gear herself up to say hello.
[6:53]Tell me about that and being familiar enough with the way grief looks.
[6:57]Oh, gosh.
[6:58]I don't know.
[6:59]I'm a mom.
[7:00]Obviously, it's not that hard to imagine, sadly, something awful like that.
[7:05]I just thought, you know, first of all, I don't think you could leave that place.
[7:08]I don't think you could go to a place where you can find and then leave without them
[7:12]or be just horrendous.
[7:15]I actually had the experience this year.
[7:17]We took our son down to Otago where he's going to university.
[7:22]And the worst thing was traveling back at the country without them, having gone down.
[7:26]Yeah.
[7:27]So I tried to imagine that really.
[7:29]And I didn't want, I wanted to be to have a really light touch with that grieving mother
[7:34]because I didn't want the novel to become too sort of gothic and, you know, with this
[7:39]ghostly woman drifting around that.
[7:41]I needed to show yet, obviously, that she's, she's remained in that place.
[7:45]She's not letting it go.
[7:46]Yeah.
[7:47]I just, I just try and get right into the scene and get into both characters and, and
[7:52]imagine it as a writing and hopefully that was, that's, that was authentic, which is great.
[8:00]And you also, from the daughter's point of view, show us about, without giving things
[8:06]away, you know, that, that less doesn't necessarily go away when you get older and that
[8:12]relationships are not always static.
[8:15]Talk a little bit about that and, and even a childhood understanding or not.
[8:19]Do you mean like the parents relationship?
[8:21]Mm hmm.
[8:22]Yeah.
[8:23]I think that the mother in the novel is a little bored.
[8:26]I think she's a little unfulfilled in the novel.
[8:28]She's raging a novel.
[8:29]Yeah.
[8:30]And I think I was sort of imagining what my life might have been like if I hadn't had
[8:34]some, some sort of creative release, you know, because my writing is so important to
[8:39]me.
[8:40]And I, and I just imagine she's, she's had these girls and now they're growing up and
[8:45]she's watching them go away as they do.
[8:48]And I think actually, you know, her marriage is okay.
[8:50]I don't get to terrible marriage.
[8:52]And I think he's, he's, he's a lovely, a lovely man in many ways, but I think she's
[8:57]a little unfulfilled and she's struggling away with this book, which you probably know
[9:01]and I know is going to be awful.
[9:04]And this other person without giving away too much is, is a bit glamorous and sophisticated.
[9:11]More sophisticated comes from a slightly different world.
[9:15]New Zealand was in 1985 quite, well, very quiet little place, you know, a little bit
[9:21]backwards in some ways.
[9:22]And he's come from a different place and it's quite sophisticated and glamorous.
[9:25]And I think, honestly, she's just sort of reaching around for something, what's the next
[9:32]thing in my life going to be?
[9:34]That was how I saw her rather than being a terrible marriage at the start of the novel.
[9:39]Yeah.
[9:40]So what do you want readers to take away from this?
[9:43]What do you want readers to take away from Alex's summer and this whole mystery and all
[9:50]of it?
[9:51]Like the whole, what's the goal?
[9:53]Interesting.
[9:54]Yeah.
[9:55]I think, I think whenever I write a story, I want the characters to...
[10:00]who become real to you and become people that you care about
[10:05]and that you take away with you and think about later.
[10:08]And I think that's what happens when I read a book
[10:10]that I love and that character stays with me,
[10:13]hopefully for if that's what you're aiming for.
[10:16]I want the book to stay and you'll put it down.
[10:18]I prefer not to tie things up too neatly.
[10:22]You might have noticed, just to leave.
[10:23]Yes, thank you.
[10:24]Yeah.
[10:26]There's not in a frustrating way,
[10:28]but just to leave a few things to the imagination
[10:30]so that you can mull it over and think,
[10:34]well, maybe they did this, maybe they did that.
[10:37]I sort of imagined that the summer becomes a kind of
[10:40]capsule in Alex's memory.
[10:43]And I don't know about you, but when I look back on
[10:46]my memories, sometimes I can't tell what was true
[10:49]and what wasn't.
[10:50]And you sort of have to ask people in your family,
[10:52]did that happen or was that, yeah.
[10:55]And I kind of wanted to leave the reader
[10:56]with that feeling.
[10:57]I'm like, wow, what just happened?
[11:00]And then I love the idea of people going to their book group
[11:03]and arguing about that, you know,
[11:05]into the evening, you know, or maybe they did this.
[11:07]No, I think this happened.
[11:08]So I was sort of trying to get that.
[11:10]I think the reader completes the story.
[11:12]And I think that the family will carry on
[11:15]and maybe kind of sweep the summer under the,
[11:18]under the rug a little bit,
[11:20]but it will, Alex won't even forget it.
[11:22]And she will think, did that happen the way I think it happened?
[11:26]Interesting.
[11:27]Yeah, my dad, my brother and I,
[11:30]all had this experience in a car
[11:33]where I could swear I was driving.
[11:37]My brother could swear he was driving
[11:39]and my dad doesn't remember.
[11:41]And I'm like, now we'll never know.
[11:43]And it's so exciting.
[11:44]Because I love that stuff.
[11:46]You're all sure of our memories of it.
[11:48]So, yes, we are.
[11:49]And sometimes it's maybe just a photograph
[11:51]and that is your entire memory of the holidays.
[11:54]There's one photograph and you can't place anything else.
[11:57]I find all of that sort of fascinating.
[12:00]Yeah.
[12:01]Yeah.
[12:02]So tell me how you became an author.
[12:05]Oh gosh.
[12:06]So I always did want to write,
[12:11]but I didn't study,
[12:14]I didn't study, I didn't do any undergraduate
[12:16]creative writing papers.
[12:17]I didn't English literature degree.
[12:19]And then I worked in various jobs.
[12:21]I got married and had children and we traveled
[12:23]and the writing was always just something I really wanted to do,
[12:27]but I didn't really know what I wanted to say.
[12:30]I didn't think I had anything to say.
[12:32]And then when I was about 39,
[12:35]I realized if I didn't knuckle down and do something,
[12:40]this was not going to happen.
[12:41]And I said to my husband,
[12:44]I'm going to go out every morning before work and write.
[12:48]And I'm going to leave you with kids.
[12:50]Have had a back over.
[12:52]He was wonderful there to be here.
[12:54]He agreed to do that.
[12:56]And off I went and I was very ruthless about it.
[13:00]So every day I was at the Cafe at 7 and then work was 8.30.
[13:04]So I had an hour and a half.
[13:06]And I did that for about 10 years and wrote
[13:09]a few books that went into a drawer
[13:11]because I knew they weren't good enough,
[13:12]but I was just teaching myself how to do it.
[13:15]And I actually in that period wrote a beautiful family,
[13:18]and I put it in the drawer.
[13:20]And then I had the opportunity to take a year away from work
[13:23]and I did an MA in creative writing.
[13:26]And at the end of that,
[13:27]I thought I thought back over all of the work I'd done
[13:31]and I felt that a beautiful family was the best thing
[13:34]I had done.
[13:35]So I pulled it out of the drawer
[13:36]and I sent it to some agents.
[13:39]And one of them was Felicity Blunt
[13:41]and she picked it up.
[13:43]Do you wish you had sent it originally?
[13:46]I said, no, I've been thinking about that.
[13:47]I mean, yes, I suppose so.
[13:50]It was a bit of a shame that it sat there for,
[13:52]but at the same time, the MA that I did do
[13:56]in that period did prepare me quite well
[13:59]for the editing process.
[14:00]I may not have felt ready for that.
[14:02]It's quite intimidating when you're dealing with someone
[14:06]as high-flying Felicity
[14:07]and she's, you know, and you're working on edits.
[14:10]And as it was, I had this imposter syndrome badly,
[14:13]but it would have been, I think, a little worse
[14:15]than I had done the MA.
[14:16]So you have to sort of say,
[14:17]I knew that the timing was actually where it needed to be.
[14:21]Thanks.
[14:22]It don't work out the way it should have.
[14:23]But I don't work out anymore.
[14:25]No, I won't books and draw us out.
[14:28]So are you going to take another book out of the drawer now
[14:31]where you can start something new or what's the plan?
[14:34]I did take them out and read them and they went like that.
[14:37]So yeah, and now I am working on a book.
[14:43]And I'm hoping it will be book two.
[14:46]Yeah, it's every book is different as I'm sure you know.
[14:49]And it's been a challenge,
[14:50]but I am trying to challenge myself.
[14:52]I'm not trying to write a beautiful family again.
[14:55]So I'm trying new things that scare me a little bit.
[14:58]And it's exciting.
[14:59]I love it.
[15:00]And I'm very lucky now that I don't have to have a day job
[15:03]and I can just write and, yeah, it's fabulous.
[15:06]So in the moment where you were taking all this time
[15:09]before work and going to the coffee shop
[15:12]and asking for your husband to take over that period
[15:15]of time of the day and being ruthless
[15:17]and then realizing that your book wasn't good enough
[15:20]and having to move on to another book.
[15:22]How did you maintain momentum?
[15:26]Why didn't at that point you say forget it?
[15:28]I tried it, it didn't work.
[15:31]Yeah, it did try.
[15:32]I mean, there is a sort of horrible brief
[15:36]when you finish an all and realize it's not
[15:39]what you hoped it would be.
[15:41]I think I also hadn't figured out
[15:42]how to do a second draft.
[15:44]I just hadn't realized how much you can improve a novel
[15:48]when you do that second draft.
[15:50]So I was putting a lot of first drafts into the draw.
[15:53]I was actually just really determined
[15:56]that hour and a half every day was, I loved it.
[15:59]It was like a highlight of my day.
[16:01]That and spending time with my children at school
[16:04]that was huge for me and I didn't want to go that.
[16:07]The outcome almost at that stage didn't matter.
[16:10]To me, it's quite so much.
[16:11]I did want to get published one day,
[16:14]but I think I understood that
[16:15]if I was going to get published first of all,
[16:17]I wanted it to be good.
[16:19]And that I just needed to do the work
[16:22]and work on my craft and get better.
[16:25]So there were times when I wanted to give up,
[16:27]but I would stop for a little while
[16:29]and then something would come into my head.
[16:31]No, I have to write that.
[16:33]And the book you haven't written
[16:34]was always the best book ever.
[16:36]Right.
[16:37]So the next one will be amazing.
[16:40]And that carried me along, I think.
[16:42]Oh, I love that.
[16:43]What is the literary scene in New Zealand?
[16:45]Like, ah, it's very literary.
[16:48]So there is quite a thriving literary scene,
[16:50]but the books that tend to get published here
[16:53]are quite literary.
[16:54]And I didn't see myself fitting that entirely.
[16:58]I could tell that my voice was a little more commercial,
[17:00]which was a little confusing.
[17:02]And for a while, that was one of the things
[17:04]I think that was making it put books
[17:06]and all I couldn't quite see,
[17:07]locally where my voice was going to fit.
[17:12]And that's probably why eventually I did
[17:14]send the book overseas.
[17:16]The other thing in New Zealand is that there's
[17:18]a strong desire on my publishers
[17:21]that you set your books in New Zealand, which is fair enough.
[17:24]And I struggled with that for a while.
[17:26]I don't see myself.
[17:27]I didn't see myself as a landscape writer
[17:30]or someone who was good at setting.
[17:32]And I was afraid to tackle it.
[17:35]And the New Zealand landscape is quite awesome in many ways.
[17:39]And I thought, I don't know if I've got what it takes.
[17:42]I don't do that justice.
[17:44]And then I just thought you've just got to do it, Jenny.
[17:47]And because this setting in a beautiful family
[17:50]is very familiar to me, I thought, maybe I can do this.
[17:55]But yeah, as I say when the book was finished
[17:57]and I was ready to send it out, I did send it overseas.
[17:59]Because I think my voice was a little more commercial
[18:02]than what it tends to get published locally.
[18:04]Well, there were a couple of things in there.
[18:06]I was like, what is a tug?
[18:07]Is it a sandal?
[18:08]A tug?
[18:09]Sandals?
[18:10]No, no, tops are your swimsuit.
[18:13]Oh.
[18:14]And channels are sandals between the toes.
[18:18]Yeah, flip-flops.
[18:20]Flip-flops, yeah.
[18:22]Christ, that the American Edison didn't want me
[18:24]to change that stuff.
[18:25]Yeah, I would have been.
[18:27]I mean, tops is such a strange word.
[18:29]And I think it might only be New Zealand,
[18:31]but of course a swimsuit, tops.
[18:33]What do you call a swimsuit?
[18:35]A swimsuit.
[18:36]Yeah, bathing suit, like a bathing suit or a swimsuit?
[18:40]Yeah, that's very posh.
[18:42]No, we can't say tops.
[18:44]Yeah.
[18:45]Interesting.
[18:46]Now I'm replaying the scenes where the mom forgot her
[18:49]tugs, and I was like, I don't know why she couldn't just
[18:51]walk out without shoes.
[18:52]But OK, now I understand.
[18:53]OK.
[18:55]Oh, do you want to have a glossary?
[18:56]Yeah.
[18:59]So what advice would you give to aspiring authors?
[19:03]We do, I start off.
[19:05]Oh, my gosh, my advice would I get?
[19:07]First of all, I do think it's really important
[19:09]that you're ruthless with your right time.
[19:11]I do think that you don't necessarily
[19:14]have to write every day, but I think
[19:15]that that right-in-time has to be ring-fenced.
[19:17]And you must be ruthless about it and not
[19:19]let anything else in in your way, because there
[19:22]are so many reasons not to write a so many pieces, yeah.
[19:27]And get the people around you to support that if you can.
[19:31]And then I think just if I be writing about something
[19:34]that you're so excited about, like, I feel like a first draft,
[19:39]especially should feel like when you have a crush on someone.
[19:42]And it's kind of this really secret fragile little thing
[19:47]that you've invented, that no one else knows about.
[19:50]It's all in your head.
[19:51]And but it must feel that that sort of obsessive light.
[19:54]I'm so fascinated with this.
[19:57]I can't let it go.
[19:59]I think if you're not feeling...
[20:00]that you're probably not writing the right story and you'll read away
[20:03]feel it either. So I think probably those two things make sure you're really
[20:08]obsessed with your story and make sure you ring fits that time and don't
[20:12]let anything or anyone get in your way if you can. Yeah. I love that. I love the
[20:18]word Ruthless when it applies to writing. That's that's it's a good word.
[20:22]I was on a strap who said that and I'm a huge fan of hers and she said you
[20:27]have to be Ruthless and she liked me was was found success a bit later on
[20:33]and she had children and so I was I was gobbling up
[20:36]Indian to be occupied with her and yeah I'm I remember saying that word
[20:41]Ruthless. Okay well we will quote her then. Jennifer thank you so much
[20:48]congratulations on a very beautiful reading of both and thanks for having me.
[20:53]My pleasure. All right take care. Bye bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to
[20:59]totally booked with Zibi formerly momstone have time to read books. If you
[21:03]loved the show tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at
[21:08]Zibi Owens and spread the word. Thanks so much. Go and buy the books.