The Rehearsal

by Henry Feltham | 7:46 pm 11/07/2010

Author: Elanor Catton (4.5)

Victoria University Press does a strong line in novels written by photogenic dark-haired young women with fringes. The majority are graduates of Victoria University's creative writing program. I struggle to tell a lot of these woman apart, and after a few drinks, it can seem that all these books are more or less about the same thing, too (roughly speaking, it's their mothers). 

I know this is wrong, but when a book like Eleanor Catton's The Rehearsal comes along, its genius really just reinforces my basic sense of the banality of so much else. It is an amazing book. Catton was 23 when she finished it, and this alone is terrifying. It concerns a group of aspiring drama students putting on their end-of-year show. But this is a little like saying the Bible is a father-son story. It doesn't really do it justice. 

The Rehearsal is incredible, lurching from reality to dreamy internal worlds, on and off stage with ease, often in the same sentence. When she does the monotonous realism of her cadre, it is simply preparation for something far stranger a few pages on. Catton's control of her characters is fierce without being intrusive, and quite simply, leaves me proud and thankful that she was born in New Zealand rather than somewhere else. I'm sure London will swallow her up with the likes of Emily Perkins, whose prose she clearly has read, but until that happens, I'll wait eagerly for whatever Catton sees fit to write next.

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