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    The Rehearsal: A Novel
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    The Rehearsal: A Novel
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    The Rehearsal: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Rehearsal: A Novel

    Written by Eleanor Catton

    Narrated by Nicole Arumugum

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A teacher's affair with his underage student jolts a group of teenage girls into a new awareness of their own power. Their nascent desires surprise even themselves as they find the practice room where they rehearse with their saxophone teacher is the safe place where they can test out their abilities to attract and manipulate. It seems their every act is a performance, every platform a stage.
    But when the local drama school turns the story into their year-end show, the real world and the world of the theater are forced to meet. With the dates of the performances--the musicians' and the acting students'--approaching, the dramas, real and staged, begin to resemble each other, until they merge in a climax worthy of both life and art.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateOct 7, 2014
    ISBN9781478954668
    Unavailable
    The Rehearsal: A Novel

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    Reviews for The Rehearsal

    3.5/5

    189 ratings33 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is a really, really fantastic novel, beautifully written and keenly observed, and all the more astounding for being the author's debut.In my opinion, what makes The Rehearsal so good is how it takes an all-too-familiar premise---a high school sex scandal between teacher and student---and presents it from an perspective that is entirely unorthodox. Absent are the explorations of the victim's psychological damage, or the revelations of the criminal's dark past. Rather, the sex scandal of The Rehearsal is presented as an object of envy among the other girls at the school, and as an occasion for their sexual awakening. Told through a series of short, temporally disjoint episodes, the novel unfolds in unexpected ways, avoiding the common high school stereotypes, while still presenting a narrative that feels real and true.The Rehearsal is not the most ambitious novel, nor is it all that earth-shattering in its message. Yet it is meticulously crafted and refreshingly original---which, I guess, is enough for me.
    • 3/5
      Two schools, one common story and lots and lots of mental gymnastics is how I'd describe this book in one pithy sentence. When a scandal breaks out at girl's high-school, the repercussions are felt by all the students. Most of them are upset that their friend Victoria hadn't told them about her ongoing affair with Mr Saladin, their music teacher. A few students talk about the ongoing drama with the private saxophone teacher they see on a weekly basis. And when the first-year students of a local drama institute find out about it, they decide to base their theatre production on the scandal. To tell the story, Catton's narrative jumps from conversations between the saxophone teacher and her pupils, to the goings on at the high-school, where everyone is trying to pick up the pieces and move forward, to the drama school, where we keep jumping backward and forward in time as we follow a group of potential candidates as they attend a weekend-long audition to be admitted as students, as they are taken through their curriculum through the year, and while they are rehearsing and performing their first theatre production. The whole thing might seem like a really cool and novel approach to narrative, or, if you happen to be me, a mostly annoying concept by a really clever young author who's trying too hard. I was excited about reading this book when I heard about it, but all the mental gymnastics left me feeling mostly... bored. Not what I'd call a great workout.
    • 3/5
      This was a really interesting read, and I particularly enjoyed the characterisation of the competitive friendships between teenage girls, which rang very true for me. I also really liked the blurring of the truth and of the characters perception of the truth all the way through, but I resented having to dig through so many layers of literary cleverness to get to the plot underneath, and having finished the book, I'm still figuring out exactly what happened.
    • 3/5
      The Rehearsal By Eleanor Catton There is a scandal at Abbey Grange Highschool. Mr. Saladin, the jazz instructor has been having a love affair with a student named Victoria. Drama is high and girls are hungry for the details of Victoria's experience and betrayal. The relationships are described in a dark comedy tribute to the torture girls can endure and solicit during these emotional teenage years. Simultaneously another drama is unfolding at the local Drama Institute where the first year actors have chosen their initial production as the portrayal of this local scandal. Paths, genders, and passions cross the lines of trust and deception. The chapters timelines are confusing but the writing is excellent and if the reader can let that go and enjoy the soap opera unfolding, this is an enjoyable and unique read.
    • 4/5
      Assured. An original style. Characters speak what they think, but you somehow know that this isn't aloud. Impressive.
    • 3/5
      Could not really get into it, did not engage me
    • 1/5
      I kept waiting for something.to happen.
    • 3/5
      In The Rehearsal, a teacher is alleged to have had a sexual relationship with one of his students. Meanwhile, students in a nearby theatre school are struggling with their own relationships. When the first-year class at The Institute decides to make theatre of the relationship between the student and her teacher, the stories cross, with obviously unpleasant results.This is a thoroughly postmodern novel, in the sense that the work feels no need to acknowledge any literary conventions that have come before it. There is technical prowess in the telling, but the writing is self-consciously artful; the book feels like the product of writers' workshops and the application of theory to story. There are few fireworks in the language; there is little music in the phrasing. The characters and the situations are both generally repugnant. While the premise of the story may be compelling, the book itself is bleak, pinched, sour.It took me weeks to work through this book. I wanted to like it but was unable to do so. Although I generally enjoy literary fiction, this text did not suit my tastes, nor could I appreciate its relentless misanthropy. Reading this book felt like an exercise, an assignment, something taken for my intellectual betterment. If you are looking for something else in a novel, you may want to pass by this one.
    • 3/5
      In The Rehearsal, the first story line is about a music teacher and the possible relationship that he had with one of his students--the other is about students in a prestigious acting school who create a play out of that teacher/student relationship. Overall, I thought that the book was wonderful--the two interwoven story lines came together and the book ended just as it should have. However, I couldn't get into the characters. I know that was part of the way that the story was written, but they almost seemed too fake. All of the descriptions gave me about half of the character, but where there could have been development for me (where it would have been beneficial), it remained the same.I understand that part of the story is about how these students are "practicing" for their real lives by their interactions and the choices that they make, but the writing in the book made it seem much more complicated and overreaching than it should be.
    • 4/5
      I gave this book 4 stars because of the inventiveness of the author and her young age. I found the style and creativity terrific and especially in someone who was only 22 when she wrote the book. I agreed with some of the other reviewers that you did have a feeling during the reading of the book that you weren't totally getting it but I think this ambiguity was intentional. I would not want a steady diet of the these type of books as my sole reading source, but I do admire the ambition of this book. I do look forward to reading more Eleanor Catton.
    • 5/5
      Literary Brilliance. Before I go into the synopsis of The Rehearsal, I just have to say that this book is not for everyone, but it certainly was my kind of book. It reminded me of the way I felt after I read The Confessions of Edward Day by Valerie Martin (click for review). This was a world into which I could escape and understand and long for. It was full of drama and script notes, angst and insecurity, scandal and lies. I loved it!There are two separate story lines in this book, until they inevitably come together about two-thirds of the way in. On the one side is the saxophone teacher and the small group of girls that she tutors individually. All the girls attend the same school, but it is during their sax lessons that we hear about the drama that takes place at the school There is especially juicy gossip to tell when the director of jazz band allegedly has an affair with one of his students. When the girls tell their stories to the sax teacher, something happens. It's as if the girls are on stage. The lights. The music. The performance. The girls are judged as much on their story-telling prowess as they are of their saxophone playing skills...and judged harshly. The saxophone wants a performance from the girls. She wants the lights to change. She wants the scene to unfold before her eyes.The other story line is that of Stanley, an awkward eighteen year old Actor and student at The Institute, which shares the same building as the music studio where the girls take their saxophone lessons. Stanley goes through a coming of age metamorphosis during his first year at The Institute. Strangely enough, there is considerably less theatrics in Stanley's quest to impress his teachers.The timeline jumps back and forth a bit as the action, characters, and stories intersect, but it is never confusing. In fact, I barely noticed the month headings at the beginning of each section, there was such a clear idea of the timing. The technique is used in such a subtle way that lends more toward understanding and excitement.The first-year actors at The Institute, including Stanley, were putting on a play about a scandal they read about in the newspaper; meanwhile, the details of the scandal itself were unwrapped by the gossiping girls and relayed to the reader through their performances, their re-creations of the scenes they experienced, all the while they were in the music studio mere steps away. There was more acting and theatrics taking place in the saxophone lessons than on the stage of the theater academy.
    • 5/5
      Eleanor Catton's debut novel is proving difficult to review. I have literally started, and erased, ten different opening paragraphs, as if what I want to say about this book is locked in my mind, there only for me. Really, this makes perfect sense, as The Rehearsal is a very introspective novel - it delves deep into the psyches of its characters, and surfaces with very few answers. Catton's style, like the tumbled thoughts running through my head, is non-linear, disjointed, and (here the comparison to my thoughts ends), genius. I finished The Rehearsal with that rare feeling of wanting to begin it again immediately.The Rehearsal has two main plotlines. First, we have the aftermath of a sex scandal at an all-girls high school, where a teacher was caught having a relationship with a student. While the actual details of this affair are never revealed to the reader, we instead are privy to the minds of several other students at the school - including the younger sister of the abused girl - and the link that brings them together, a nameless saxophone teacher. The other story is of a group of first-year students at a dramatic arts academy near the high school, who are trying to discover what role they occupy in the great production that is life.These plots merge when the drama students decide to use the sex scandal as inspiration for their year-end performance.Catton moves between her two plotlines with great skill, using days of the week as titles for the scandal story, and months as titles for the drama story. The trick is in discovering when these plots will meet - for of course, we know they must. At times, the girls at the high school may actually be actors in the academy's play, so that one plotline is really only dramatized by the other. The reader is never sure of what is real and what is an act.This structure is what makes The Rehearsal so exciting. Catton takes huge stylistic risks, and requires her readers to forge ahead through their confusion, to suspend the desire to know everything that happens, and to accept the uncertainties of her world. We will never know what parts of The Rehearsal are scripted scenes in a play, and what parts are true to life - and I'm sure some readers will hate this, find it pretentious. I, however, was awed by Catton's restraint. Her ability to leave questions unanswered is refreshing, as is her insistance in an active reader - you cannot read this book without giving it your full attention. Hands down, this is the most challenging, thought-provoking novel I have read all year.
    • 3/5
      The plot summary sounded great - after a sex scandal at a private school, the nearby acting school decides to put on a play about the incident. The execution was thoroughly disorienting. Until I read in another review that the girls in the high school were in chapters labeled with days of the week, and the acting students were in chapters labeled with months, I was very confused. That helped a bit. I believe that some of the vignettes (the plot is nonlinear and the view is always changing) were the actual play, but I'm still not completely sure. I continued reading because it was an Early Reviewer book, and somewhere in the middle, the story became a bit more clear for me. When the story stayed with the acting students I liked it much better. Over all, I don't like reading a story that makes me feel stupid because I can't figure out who anyone is or what is happening. Usually by the end I can have a good picture of the book, but this one left me baffled. Other readers who can deal with such a nonstandard novel may enjoy it, but it didn't work for me.
    • 2/5
      I had a very hard time getting through this book, and would have quit after about 20 pages if I had not wanted to review it for the Early Reviewers programme for Librarything. The writing was excellent and very clever, but The Rehearsal was way too pretentious for my tastes, and the characters did not engage me. The book is centred around the aftermath of an incident at a high school where a music teacher is accused of being involved with one of his students. The author does not write much about the actual incident, but rather how it affects the people on the periphery of the event, and in particular the younger sister of the "victim". The story is not straightforward and the viewpoint jumps around wildly, making the book very disjointed and unsatisfying, though perhaps memorable. The adults in the book, parents and teachers and school counsellors, all seemed creepy and unrealistic to me, particularly the unnamed female saxophone tutor who gives private lessons to some of the students at the school. She belittles caring mothers and students she finds boring, and tries to push the victim's sister into a lesbian relationship with another of her students, for vicarious reasons, while remembering her own failed relationship.On top of all this, there is a parallel story about an exclusive acting school with very dubious teaching methods, and unnamed instructors who have Important Titles. The book felt like a disjointed exercise in saying clever things about life and acting, and life as acting, and adolescent sexuality and the politics of high school friendships and cliques. The writing is good and the incidents are memorable but I did not enjoy the experience on the whole, and would not recommend the book to anyone I know.
    • 4/5
      An Early Reviewers book.A most original, intelligent book; notable that it was written by such a young author. The borders between fact and fantasy are blurred as a group of students deal with a sex scandal between one of their own and a teacher. Meanwhile, a drama group uses the scandal as the basis of their production, and a saxaphone teacher pries her young students for information: 'Why do you want to know?' Julia says. 'You'll still be on the outside looking in. Even if you know everything, even if you know all the things you shouldn't, even then you'll still be on the outside.'Do our performances define our selves, is there a line between reality and acting? Often we don't know while reading what is real and what is performance, but in the end, does it matter? Watch for more from this author; I suspect she has a lot to say.
    • 5/5
      The Rehearsal explores the effects of a high-school sex scandal. A jazz band teacher becomes involved with one of his students, and we watch the other students and the town react. The off-campus saxophone teacher who many parents start taking their daughters to instead, the sister of the scandalized girl, and one of the students at the local drama institute are the main characters followed throughout the novel.The first-year students at the drama institute decide to use what they know about the scandal (mostly based on rumor) to stage their year-end play. The drama school allows for a backdrop of acting vs. real life. When anyone reacts to the crisis, are they genuine, or are they playing the role they feel they must? The style of this novel is very unique; at times, it's difficult to tell whether you're reading true accounts or scenes from the drama school's play. Much of the dialogue in the novel feels like lines from a play - but, instead of coming across as fake or pompous, it reads as what the character would truly be thinking, but would never dare say aloud. I really enjoyed the style and found it engaging, but I can see how some readers might find it frustrating. I think the confusion was part of the message - how much of what we experience is what we truly feel, and how often are we just acting the way we think we should?Great novel, and I look forward to more from Eleanor Catton.
    • 4/5
      The Rehearsal is a brilliantly conceived first novel by Eleanor Catton. The story is anchored in a high school sex scandal and shifts locales between the high school, a music studio and a nearby drama school as easily as water slips through cracks. Though it's possible to sometimes lose track of what is real and what is being acted out on the stage, it mostly doesn't matter. Ms. Catton has done such a fine job in creating this gem of a story, that we are happy to just be along for the ride.
    • 4/5
      The Rehearsal is a unique debut novel by Eleanor Catton. The main premise of the story is an all girls school is rocked by the discovery of a sex scandal within their hallowed halls: The music teacher has become inappropriately involved with one of his jazz band students. The school scrambles to deal with the situation by setting up counseling sessions for the girls and parents approach an outside saxophone teacher to find space in her calendar to tutor their daughters. The news of the scandal, which has swirled through the community, is picked up by the first year students at the local acting school as the basis for their end of year school production.Catton's approach in telling this story is an ambitious one. Told through multiple POV's the story unfolds through snippets of discussions between the various characters. Catton leave it up to the reader to piece these snippets together to bring the story into focus. Even time-lines are treated as a fluid variable, shifting randomly backwards and forwards in time. The reader is left guessing if a scene they are reading is part of the play the acting school is preparing or reality; if it is being told by actors or the real characters. At times this fluidity of narration and time made the book frustrating to read and I found myself jumping back to pages I had already read to see where I could stitch this new information into the fabric of the story. The writing style is sophisticated and captures the sexual awakening of teenagers with intelligence and refinement. The saxophone, under Catton's pen, has a sexual presence of its own and develops a personality beyond a mere prop or musical instrument. The characters are well developed.Overall, I grew to enjoy this novel the further I got into it. There is a lot going on and I found that I was stopping frequently to sit back and analyze what I had just read. It is definitely not something that you can pick up and quickly read. Too much of the story is meshed in subtle innuendos and play on words. This book may appeal to a reader that has an interest in acting as the story goes into some details about acting techniques. The saxophone teacher's vivid descriptions of the personalities of instruments and the people that gravitate to play these instruments may appeal to someone interested in jazz music or music in general.
    • 5/5
      A scandal upsets a high school and we witness its effects on students, friends, teachers, and a theatre production by a nearby acting institute. This book is extremely literary but very readable. Its subject is serious but the author presents it with cutting honesty that's clever and often humourous. This is not a dreary account of a ruined young girl. It's the aftershocks of the event and the characters it reveals that make this story, totally confused (on purpose) about who is a character and who is "real," and whether we are always acting, always playing a role. Read the first few pages to see if you'll enjoy the style. I did.
    • 1/5
      How disappointing. I really liked The Luminaries, but I had to abandon this book about half way through. The dialogue was just ridiculous - a teacher cannot and does not say the sorts of things written in this book to parents or students. And the teenagers had all these ideas that seemed way out of line for what a normal teenager would be thinking. Couple that with a story line of a teacher having an improper relationship with a student and I just couldn't stomach it with everything in the news these days. It didn't help that it centers around music teachers and students and as a musician I find that authors never get that right.
    • 5/5
      Eleanor Catton is a witch. I say this out of great respect, as I was taught to do by my Fake Auntie Barbara, who is also a witch. I know that Catton is a witch because:

      i) I do not care about sexuality in fiction. It's been done to death (primarily, I suspect, because it lets writers, who like to think they're pure as the driven snow, feel like victims. Most writers, of course, are wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of the rest of the human population and got that way because of a wide range of historical injustices). It lets writers think they have something interesting to say about The Human Condition when they have nothing to say about actual human lives.

      ii) I don't much care about coming of age novels, because most teenagers are dull, repetitive, irritating and more or less subhuman. The ones that aren't don't act like teenagers, and coming of age novels involving them are thus weird and not really coming of age novels.

      iii) I do not believe the whole world's a stage.

      iv) With few exceptions, I don't like jazz.

      So Catton has written a coming of age novel, which is primarily about sexuality and The Theater, and focuses on the symbolism of jazz saxophones. You'll note that, despite all this, I really liked this book.

      But there is more evidence still. There are books, good books, which are unreadable for the first x chapters. Consider Catch 22, which I at least found boring and baffling for the first 100 pages... and then fell for, hard, as hard as a teenage saxophonist. Or Death in Venice, which did nothing for me for about the first third, but so much for me in the last two thirds that I've gone on to read Dr Faustus *twice*. And I'm not at all masochistic. Mann just does it.

      The Rehearsal is an outlier even on this scale, though. For the first 200--200!--pages, I was mostly put off. I had no desire to keep reading. The two narratives seemed to have nothing to do with each other; the stylistic fireworks grew tired quickly (about half of the book takes place somewhere between reality and a saxophone teacher's perception of that reality, which is symbolized by characters being lit as if on stage); points i) through iv) had been firmly established. I figured I'd finish it, because it was shortish and the Luminaries is apparently the greatest shit ever. But I was just as likely to play video games as pick the book up.

      And then the two narratives came together and I became a lunatic obsessive about finishing the book. My wife typically asks how a book was once I'm done, and I say things like "It was good, except for x, y and z, and I don't think the author put enough thought into a, and I don't know. I liked it okay." That's the books I really like. And she says, "Are you going to read [author's other book]?" "Maybe. Not right now."

      But with The Rehearsal, the conversation went like this:

      "How was it?"
      "Great."
      "Huh. Are you going to read the Luminaries?"
      "Yes. You should read this. It's really great."

      Enough beating my chest. Why is it so good? Well, Catton takes those tired topics and, implausibly, makes something new from them by looking at how adults perceive teenage coming of age sexuality, how they/we exploit it, distort it, and impose our own codes and experiences on the young.

      She writes about being a teenage boy more touchingly than any ex-teenage boy (for them, apparently, life was mostly about The Penis. For me, as for Catton's young man, life was about substantially more important things, as well as learning to cope with aforementioned Penis).

      She writes with awareness of the constructedness of her own fiction (i.e., the book is a stage), but without any suggestion that the constructedness of it makes it less valid. It's almost as if the constructedness is something to enjoy, because it makes it possible to tell truths about the non-fictional world (in the case of this book: that growing up is akin to rehearsing for the outside world, i.e., it is not the case that all the world's a stage at all, it's far more terrible than that, and you should revel in the moments when you can act out fictions).

      And she writes about homosexuality, without Writing About Homosexuality. It's just that between one and three of her characters would rather make out with someone of their own gender. If that's an issue for you, that's on you. The book does not care about your stupid issues, though it does care very much about the way the world treats those one to three characters (i.e., shabbily). I grant you, that sounds weird. Almost as if it's hard to explain using reason.

      Almost as if the author is a witch.
    • 4/5
      Eleanor Catton's debut novel is a brilliant exploration of the arts, sexuality, and, most significantly, the line that separates truth from fiction. Written as her Master's thesis, The Rehearsal shows the natural talent of Catton, who writes as intelligently and maturely here as she did in her prize-winning follow-up, The Luminaries. While Catton's work is far from the most readable of young authors today, it's undoubtedly some of the most intelligent and finely woven fiction I have ever seen. Each word is chosen with such foresight and precision that it's a wonder to me how she produces novels as fast as she does (were I capable of producing a work such as The Luminaries, I imagine it would take a lifetime.)Set in an arts school following a scandal—a teacher's affair with an underage student—The Rehearsal may sound like your average morality play or Lifetime movie. It's far from it. At times, with its ambiguously drawn scenes and dramatic play of various relationships, I was reminded of a tamer David Lynch. And at times, especially as I was pulled into the story of the drama school, I was reminded of the darkness and mindfuckery of 2010's Black Swan. Make no mistake, however, Catton's creation is all her own.As The Rehearsal opens, it may be hard to follow as the dialogue is horribly pretentious, but once the reader realizes that some of the story (and in ways, all of it?) is acting, one may assume that this staged speech was the author's intent. Thus a big foray into false memory, lies, and truth unveils itself. It's all so expertly crafted with little clues here and there, sparks of witty dialogue that highlight the play within a play (and “all the world's a stage”). It's never clear—at least it wasn't to me—when you're reading the “truth” and when you're reading the “reenactment” of the “truth.” One can make assumptions such as that the truth opens the novel and everything that follows is a reinterpretation; or that all is fabrication that leads to the truth in the end; or that those scenes with the most pretentious dialogue are clearly staged and everything else is reality. But in the end, they're all assumptions. Only the author possibly knows the truth. For me, that's okay. From my many years of reviewing books, however, I've noticed that there are many readers who H A T E such ambiguity. I recall now another similar novel I loved that also blurred the lines without ever directly revealing the real truth: Heidi Julavits's The Uses of Enchantment. And guess how many one and two star ratings that novel has.The Rehearsal is so multi-layered that it is on one hand confusing, on the other, brilliant. It's not the sort of novel that a reader should expect answers from; it's a novel that intends to confuse you and blow your mind. Despite its seemingly “light” plot synopsis, The Rehearsal is the foundation on which Catton is building her genius.
    • 4/5
      Even though I didn't enjoy reading this book, I am in awe of Eleanor Catton's talent.
    • 3/5
      I had high hopes for Eleanor Catton's debut novel, but unfortunately after a strong start it began to bog down, and I found myself skimming the last third just hoping something interesting would happen. The book opens in the aftermath of a sex scandal between a high-school girl and her jazz teacher. The scandal is retold through events that occur in the classroom, as well as in private music lessons with a different music teacher. At the same time, a young man named Stanley begins studying at a prestigious acting school, and the students decide to stage a dramatization of the sex scandal. These story lines intersect when Stanley meets the sister of the girl involved in the scandal. Catton is a strong writer, serving up strong, thought-provoking passages about sexual abuse and sexual awakening. Like her prize-winning The Luminaries, this novel has a unique structure, but in this case it felt like the author was trying too hard to impress. The thread involving the private music teacher was most perplexing to me -- what was she trying to do there? It just didn't work, and the two-dimensional characters didn't help, either.Still, it was interesting to read the first work by a now well-known author.
    • 3/5
      So many reviews I read of The Rehearsal called it brilliant, and postmodern. I won't hold the PoMo against Eleanor Catton, but this just read like a very smart, young writer doing her best to impress everyone.Catton's prose is sharp and kept me involved all the way through. But about a third of the way in, the realization struck that I was reading a play, not a book. And a somewhat plotless play, at that.Most characters were flat, what there was of a plot was disconnected and non-linear, and the ending was ... there was no end. It was as if a voice somewhere had called out, "Aaaand, scene," so that's where the book ended.The book I would have liked to read would truly have been about the effects the scandal of a teacher having an affair with a student, and then the local Drama University's first-year students doing a play about it, while one of the actors discovers he's dating the sister of the student, had on the community. That would have been interesting.This one, not so much.
    • 4/5
      There were many choice phrases in Catton's book but overall, it was too precious. In some ways she captured the angst of adolescence and in particular the relationship between teens and adults but everyone was just too clever.
    • 3/5
      The author explores many different issues and holds appeal for young adults as well as older readers. Like THE LUMINARIES, this debut novel reveals layers of meaning. Each reader will come away with a different view of the content.
    • 2/5
      I read this book for my book group. Or rather I tried. I came to it having just finished "Sword Of Honour" by Evelyn Waugh. The extreme contrast did not help the experience. One book, a masterpiece borne out of a global conflict, the other an unfathomable enigma borne out of a scandal in a girl's school. One felt profound and insightful, the other experimental and confusing. My initial impression was that the book was intriguing. Here's the saxophone teacher addressing a mother: "I require of all my students, that they are downy and pubescent, pimpled with sullen mistrust, and boiling away with private fury and ardour and uncertainty and gloom ... If I am to teach your daughter, you darling hopeless and inadequate mother, she must be moody and bewildered and awkward and dissatisfied and wrong." Intrigue soon gave way to frustration. I lack the patience and the inclination to ponder the improbable, non-linear plot. I also lack the patience to work out what is real, what is imagined, and what it might all mean. The insurmountable hurdle was that I just could not care less about any of the characters. About halfway through I resorted to reading the plot summary on Wikipedia. Never a good sign. At that point, I started to skip ahead. I was invariably struck by the simple and accessible quality of the writing, but also how this was married to a tedious "plot" and dull characters. Plenty of people love this book. Some of the scenes are intriguing, and the book is very well written, ultimately though its lack of credibility and coherence was distracting and annoying. I suspect the extent to which a reader might enjoy this book would largely depend on his or her tolerance for ambiguity.
    • 4/5
      'I ask my students,' the saxophone teacher says, 'is your life a gift worth giving? Your normal, vanilla-flavoured life, your two-minute noodles after school, your television until ten, your candles on the dresser and facewash on the sink?' She smiles and shakes her head. 'Of course it isn't, and the reason for that is that they simply haven't suffered enough to be worth listening to.'
      It took a couple of goes to get beyond the first 8 pages, but I really enjoyed this semi-experimental novel. It mixes up the story of a scandal at a semi-posh girls' school and a drama school play about the incident.
      The scenes at the girls' school or from the play about it were the most compelling for me: there were some brilliant characterisations. I was far less interested in the chapters that focused on the drama school audition and training process,
    • 4/5
      I'd hazard to guess that this is probably not a novel with widespread appeal. It's difficult at times to distinguish between what is "real" and what is "imagined" and what is merely being performed for an audience. Eventually I came to the conclusion that all that didn't matter. None of these characters are meant to be real people. They certainly (to me) don't talk like I imagine real people would in similar situations. It's not an imitation of life. Not even close. Yet, there are whole passages I wish I could keep, just so I could read later....again and again. This book is at times unflinchingly honest and intense. I sat back and marveled at the dialogue. So good I simply stopped caring that the frequent jumps back and forth through time could make even this reader's head spin.

      I picked up the book today and knew I would finish it. I itched to open it every time I set it down. I got to the last line and sadly turned the page. This author must write more or I'll be sorely disappointed.