If I Knew You Were Going To Be This Beautiful I Never Would Have Let You Go | Judy Chicurel

'A beautifully evocative portrait of a tight-knit community on Long Island during the summer of 1972' Observer - not to be missed by readers of Alice Hoffman and Jennifer Egan.

A nostalgic, insightful and poignant story of women's lives in the 1970s. 'Raw, nostalgic, utterly compelling and very, very cool...A mind-blowingly impressive debut' Eva Rice There are books that stay with you long after you've read them. This is one of those. Katie has been hanging around Comanche Street for three years and there are still times when it feels like she is watching a movie starring everyone in the world, except her. Through sun-kissed days by the ocean and hazy nights in drifter bars, through love and death and pain, while the Vietnam war rages distantly and yet disturbingly close, she yearns to belong and never dreams that all the others want is to escape. Night after night, they wait for something to happen. It's summer, and anything is possible ...A powerful coming-of-age tale reminiscent of Anne Tyler, Alice Hoffman and Melissa Banks. * Author interview included