If I Knew You Were Going to be This Beautiful I Never Would Have Let You Go by Judy Chicurel is a novel that reads almost like a collection of short stories, set in the summer of 1972 in a working class community on Long Island.
Narrated by Katie, the stories within This Beautiful focus on a group of young people, all trying to navigate their futures, all in some way affected by the Vietnam War.
Let's talk first about that title, which clocks in at 17 words and 75 characters. I think it's absolutely magnificent - it's a story all of its own, without any further explanation needed. When an explanation does appear in the book, the title becomes even more poignant. I don't think every book should have a title that will take up more than half a tweet, but for Chicurel's novel it really works.
Once you're past the title, what you're faced with in This Beautiful is a series of haunting tales about a group of people undergoing huge change. Some parts read like vignettes, others short stories, and they all come together to paint a portrait of a town scarred by war yet on the cusp of something new.
Katie takes us through Long Island, introducing us to her school friends, Mitch the Vietnam War vet who lost a leg and spends all his time drinking, the local drug dealers, Luke the Vietnam War vet she's in love with, and more. Set in the summer between Katie's leaving school and starting college, every story Katie tells and person she introduces us to is in some way a manifestation of what she herself is going through - trying to find her place, work out who she is and what she wants from the future.
As a novel with the Vietnam War close to its centre, there is an awful lot of talk about death, and to counter that, an awful lot of talk about birth. Many of Katie's peers are becoming parents, and Katie frequently references wanting to get married and have children herself. Becoming a mother is seen in some ways in the novel as the ultimate validation, at other times as a punishment for certain behaviours, and at others as a completely unwanted thing.
This Beautiful is not a conventional beginning, middle and end kind of book, so don't expect everything tied up neatly in a bow. The closest I've come before to something like This Beautiful is Tim O'Brien's The Things We Carried, a series of interlinked short stories about a platoon of soldiers who served in Vietnam. This Beautiful seems to tell the other side of the Vietnam story, focusing primarily on those left behind (and occasionally those who returned home). This Beautiful is painful at times (quite a lot of the time), but it's also quite hopeful in some ways - the stories of people getting out and making a success of themselves are few, but the ones that work do have realistic happy endings. Chicurel's novel will leave you feeling a bit raw, but you know you'll have read something special.
•If I Knew You Were Going to be This Beautiful I Never Would Have Let You Go is out in the UK on October 30, 2014.
How I got this book: From the publisher, Tinder Press. This did not affect my review.
Imagine Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep mixed with a pinch of Sherlock, a dash of Midsomer Murders and a subtle hint of The Craft, and you have something approaching Tana French's utterly compelling and slightly chilling The Secret Place.
A year after teenager Chris Harper is found murdered close to a private girls' school in Dublin, student Holly Mackey goes to see Detective Stephen Moran and hands him a picture she has found of Chris, tacked on a school noticeboard called the Secret Place. Under the picture of Chris are glued, like a ransom note, the words "I know who killed him". And so begins the most intense day of Stephen's life, as he and a fellow detective head to Holly's school to try to find a murderer.
The Secret Place is split into two, with chapters alternating between the present day and the past, the latter starting roughly nine months before Chris was murdered and taking us to just after his killing. While we know Chris will die - French makes sure to tell us the exact number of months, weeks and days to his death in each chapter set in the past - what we don't know is how and who is involved, so there's a sense of doom that pervades the past narrative. And in the present, we know that Stephen is drawing ever closer to finding a murderer, so the tension is clear in every chapter.
French's characters are well-formed, and fascinating. Stephen is a clever, determined guy, who knows that helping to solve this murder could get him out of the cold cases squad and into the department he really wants to be in. That's slightly calculating, but his ambition makes him more likeable (for me at least), and his ability to mould his personality and mannerisms to suit the person he is talking to is interesting to watch. He's a people person, and his intuition and ability to read others makes him key to solving this case.
Unfortunately for Stephen, he's stuck working with Antoinette Conway, the lead detective in the Chris Harper case. She's a tough, no-nonsense detective (sort of like Keeley Hawes' Lindsay Denton in Line of Duty) who doesn't fit in with the rest of the murder squad, and who doesn't care that everyone hates her. She's professional, super clever, and frustrated that she hasn't yet found Chris's killer. Watching her develop and form a partnership with Stephen over the course of the novel is great - you just know this is a pairing that could go far if they just stopped underestimating each other.
But the most compelling characters are the teenage girls at the centre of the novel - Holly and her three friends Julia, Becca and Selena, and their rival gang Joanne, Gemma, Orla and Alison. The interactions between these girls - friends, enemies, frenemies - is a bit like reading an account someone has written of watching different species of monkeys living together in the same enclosure. French captures being a teenage girl perfectly - the bitchiness, the insecurity, the rivalries, the distinct yet same personalities. But most of all, French shows an exaggerated version of how teenage girls can feel invincible if they just have a group of friends surrounding them.
The Secret Place is a murder mystery, a psychological thriller and an examination of growing up all in one. It's pacy (even though it's more than 500 pages long), and it's a real page-turner. This is definitely the book that will break French out, and have everyone talking.
•The Secret Place is released in the UK on August 28.
How I got this book: From the publisher, Hodder & Stoughton. This did not affect my review.
