Eleanor Catton — The Rehearsal

Victoria University Press 2008 Paperback 316 In the aftermath of a high-school sex scandal, a group of teenage girls is jolted into an intoxicating new awareness of their own potency and power. The sudden public scrutiny turns their every act into a performance, and every platform into a stage — with the enigmatic Saxophone Teacher only too happy to play both confidante and interrogator to her students. But when the local drama school decides to turn the scandal into a play, the real world and the world of the theatre collide, and soon the boundaries between private and public, fact and fantasy begin to dissolve.Provocative, intricately crafted, The Rehearsal is at once a tender evocation of the bewilderment and bravado of youth, and a shrewd exposé of how we are all performers in life. Startlingly original, it introduces Eleanor Catton as an extraordinarily accomplished new voice in contemporary fiction. Cover has abrasions and also rubbed at cover edges. Good