[The] highlight of this book is Woollett's prose style, which beautifully conveys the details of what is going on while at the same time wielding a less is more touch and power of suggestion, to maximise the psychological and physical tension of the story. Beautiful Revolutionary is part twisted love story, part dark, noirish, crime novel. I recommend it.""Laura Elizabeth Woollett has embarked on a brave quest with Beautiful Revolutionary - and the risk has paid off, with her historically rich and breathtakingly entertaining story about one female hippie searching for life's meaning in all the wrong places.""In order to write Beautiful Revolutionary , Laura Elizabeth Woollett spent years researching the Jonestown massacre. She interviewed surviving members of the People's Temple and the families of those who died, creating an in-depth portrait of an era and one of its most extreme manifestations. perfect for fans of Emma Cline's The Girls and The Family by Chris Johnston and Rosie Jones.""She has taken years of extensive research, including interviews with surviving members of the Jones cult, then bent these facts into fictional shape.

She follows Joan Didion, another sharp-eyed observer of the Californian scene in the '60s and '70s - another writer who appreciated how genuine human impulses could be harnessed and warped by the wrong kind of leader.""A beautifully-written and certainly compelling novel.""Woollett has wisely chosen to forgo the fetishism of death and Jim Jones that is so often the focus of this tragedy. With Beautiful Revolutionary , Woollett has created an utterly intoxicating portrait of the lives of those seeking to build something new in a world that seemed to be losing its mind. Although we know what awaits us, Woollett masterfully weaves a suspenseful and complex story about people - of their dreams, beliefs, ideals, and lives all coming to a horrific end - in a way that is uniquely hers. Woollett is electric.""Meticulously researched. Woollett's prose is arresting - vivid without being flowery, subtle but still affecting.

While the plot is dramatic and intriguing, the quality of Woollett's prose is the most enjoyable aspect of this novel. This is an excellent work of literary historical fiction.""It's easy to see why Woollett is one of Australia's leading young writers. The characters and observations are incisive and gripping, and prose masterful and electric."" Beautiful Revolutionary is some of the most exciting fiction I've encountered. It fearlessly explores the human elements that attracted masses to the Peoples Temple and to Jim Jones - fear, lust, the need to be loved, and the urge to feel a part of something larger than the self. This story cuts close to the bone, unrelenting and irrefutably true, over and over. Laura Elizabeth Woollett is an immense talent, and this is a bracing - and necessary - read.

""Woollett's writing makes this story an electricity storm. The clouds are weed smoke and the lightening charging through that haze is pure sexual energy. I'm almost half-way through and feel wholly transported. The world is both real and surreal; these characters alien and freakishly familiar to me. Completely gripping, and dripping with detail never overdone.""Laura Woollett's imaginative retelling of the Jonestown tragedy does what only fiction can do - endows Jim Jones and his inner circle with a sense of humanity. She formulates answers to unknowable questions - how could otherwise sane people be pulled into Jones's web of evil? What happened that last, tragic day? A lyrical and sharply rendered tale of innocence lost and ideals betrayed."".