Eleanor Catton won the Adam Prize for her first novel The Rehearsal in 2007. Published by VUP in New Zealand, it has been since sold to publishers in the UK, the USA, and Europe. In 2007 Catton also won the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition, and was awarded the 2008 Schaeffer Fellowship to the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop.
Read a review of Eleanor Catton's novel, The Rehearsal, from the New Zealand Listener
BOOK
The Rehearsal
A high-school sex scandal jolts a group of teenage girls into a new awareness of their own potency and power. The sudden and total publicity seems to turn every act into a performance, and every platform into a stage. But when the local drama school decides to turn the scandal into a show, the real world and the world of the theatre are forced to meet, and soon the boundaries between private and public begin to dissolve . . .
The Rehearsal is an exhilarating and provocative novel about the unsimple mess of human desire. Startlingly original, it is at once a tender evocation of its young protagonists and a shrewd exposé of emotional compromise. It introduces Eleanor Catton, a boldly inventive and extraordinarily accomplished new voice in New Zealand fiction.
"My favourite New Zealand novel of the year."
Louise O'Brien, Nine to Noon Best Books of 2008
"This is a daring book, full of velvety pleasures but never afraid to show its claws. Eleanor Catton is crazily talented and insightful - and best of all, she makes language seem new." Emily Perkins
"The Rehearsal is a significant debut novel from an exciting young writer. Eleanor Catton is a new talent who has arrived fully formed, with an accomplished, confident and mature voice. This is a startling novel, striking and strange and brave."
Louise O'Brien, Listener