The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton - 2008

Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University Press VUP, 2008. First printing. Paperback. Fine. 317 pages. True first Edition with French flaps. "Hailed as one of the most 'dazzlingly brilliant debut novels you will ever read,' The Rehearsal introduces Canadian-born Eleanor Catton as a bold new writer who's already making her mark on the international literary stage. 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 expose‚ of how we are all performers in life. Startlingly original, it introduces Eleanor Catton as an extraordinarily accomplished new voice in contemporary fiction. "