*Starred Review* Written as her master's thesis in creative writing, New Zealand author Catton's first novel was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. Considering the author was only in her early twenties when she wrote it, The Rehearsal is a tour de force that tells two stories simultaneously while delighting in doubles, parallels, and couples. The first story is of the sexual abuse of a high-school girl by her adult (male) music coach; the second is of how a neighboring drama school adopts this incident as the dramatic core of its year-end performance. Performance is the operative word here, for the two stories, which gradually come together, are presented scenically (some complete with stage directions) with dialogue that is less human speech than declamation or dramatic monologue. Readers are invited to consider that adolescence is a rehearsal for adulthood, various characters trying on personae and emerging sexual identities as they might costumes for a performance. Linking the girls' stories is their female saxophone teacher, a powerfully realized character who serves as surrogate analyst and stage manager of their lives. That scenes are often presented nonchronologically, plus the fact that the line between performance and reality grows increasingly blurred, renders this a challenging and sometimes overintellectualized read, but the combination of beautiful writing and inventive, nontraditional structure still make it a dazzling debut.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2010 Booklist

"Theater," says one of the characters in Catton's shrewd if turgid debut, "is a concentrate of life as normal." This idea must be embraced in order to enjoy a novel in which the characters speak and act as if on stage. The girls at the Abbey Grange school are shocked by an affair between a teacher and a student, but Catton aptly observes that they are mostly disappointed by being only peripherally involved in such delicious drama. The girls confide in their saxophone teacher, a puppet-mistress straight out of Notes on a Scandal, who becomes intent on orchestrating a relationship between two of the girls when not delivering monologues on teaching and the psychology of teenage girls. A subplot follows bland first-year drama student Stanley and his increasing involvement with a group of Abbey Grange students focused on staging a play that will also provide a convenient narrative collision point. The novel's real subject is the performance of human life, and in this respect, Catton's choice of adolescent girls and drama students is apt, though the cast is limiting and their revelations repetitive. It's a good piece of writing, but not an especially enjoyable novel. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

ENTER the New Zealander Eleanor Catton, stage left, delivering a wildly brilliant and precocious first novel (she's in her mid-20s) that's not easy to describe. Nonlinear and occasionally tricky to follow, it's a series of plays within plays; and as in a piece of experimental theater, its characters often break mid-dialogue to confess in startlingly honest asides or snatch at one another's thoughts, with lighting and music added during moments of high drama or hushed intimacy. The play's not just the thing, it's everything. If Catton seems to be getting up in your face with high art, that's because she knows her tale has been told before and she wants to make it new. "The Rehearsal" is, first and foremost, a coming-of-age story. The novel shuffles between two locales: a drama academy known as the Institute and the attic studio of an unnamed woman who teaches saxophone to kids from Abbey Grange, a nearby girls' school rocked by scandal after the music teacher, Mr. Saladin, has an affair with a student named Victoria. The Institute's first-year actors have decided to use this tabloid story as the basis of their end-of-year play, with none of the names changed to protect the innocent. "It was Mr. Saladin," one of the actors observes, while improvising as Victoria, "who had the adolescent relationship, all backseat whispers and doorway fumbles. . . . I didn't play the adult. Mr. Saladin played the child." One of the other stars, Stanley, has meanwhile become involved with the actual Victoria's younger sister, Isolde, who's coming to see him perform on opening night. Complications, as they say, ensue. The affair itself - a subject of speculation and fantasy among the characters because it happens offstage - opens secret doors in the hearts and minds of all concerned, forcing them to confront their own ideas about sexuality, identity and desire. For Isolde, it represents the dawning awareness of female power. "How," she imagines asking her sister, "were you able to turn your head and look hard at him and crane up and kiss his mouth? How were you not paralyzed with fear?" For Julia, two years Isolde's senior and exploring her own sexuality, it reveals the heady aphrodisiac of risk: "The fact that Victoria was underage and virginal or whatever wasn't exciting because he could exercise more power over her. It was exciting because he stood to lose so much more." And for the unnamed saxophone teacher, herself suffering from an unrequited love for her teacher (a private drama she projects onto the budding attraction between Julia and Isolde), it's a chance to dress down the overprotective mothers who darken her door: "Remember that these years of your daughter's life are only the rehearsal for everything that comes after. . . . It's in her best interests to slip up now, while she's still safe." THERE'S plenty to enjoy here, including Catton's keen insights into high school's herd mentality and the remarkable set pieces in which the young actors are put through the paces by their tutors. It doesn't always come off. Catton can lapse into preciousness, and she has a drama-killing tendency to interpolate herself when the wonderful moments she's constructed should be left alone. The play is the thing, after all. But this young author is astonishingly talented, and her writing can steal any scene. So it seems only fair to give her the final lines before the curtain falls: "The girls at Abbey Grange are forever defining each other," Catton understands, "tenderly and savagely and sometimes out of spite. It is a skill that will be sharpened to a blade . . . It is the darkest and deadliest of their arts, that each girl might construct or destroy the image of any of the rest." 'The girls at Abbey Grange are forever defining each other, tenderly and savagely and sometimes out of spite.' Adam Ross's first novel, "Mr. Peanut," will be published this month.

Two story strands weave through this highly inventive novel. In the first, the students at the Abbey Grange School are reeling in the aftermath of an alleged affair between a senior girl and her teacher. The incident awakens their adolescent angst and their budding interest in their own sexuality. Although the school has set up counseling sessions for the girls, it is their saxophone teacher who plays the role of chief confessor, therapist, and voyeur. At the same time, students at a neighboring drama school learn their craft by a variety of experimental teaching methods that include extreme theatrical games. The two strands come together as students from both schools meet, mingle, and engage one another. While the music students rehearse for an end-of-term recital, the drama students work on their shocking year-end project-a reenactment of the student-teacher affair. Verdict Unfolding over a series of weeks and months, this riveting narrative is a sparkler of a debut.-Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Kingston, Ont. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.