The Rehearsal – Eleanor Catton

The novel has at its centre a bit of a sex scandal at the Abbey Grange high school, though it is glimpsed only through the murky reportage of some of its pupils in their weekly saxophone lessons, then through a drama put on by students at a local, but prestigious, stage school.

The saxophone teacher, up in her attic studio, encourages her girls to open up to her and reveal the secrets they withhold from their mothers, so what they say of the ‘abused’ girl is music to her ears. The pretext is for them to use their emotions and experiences to inject soul and feeling into their playing; the suspicion is that it is her only window on the sensual world.

Meanwhile in parallel, young would-be actor Stanley auditions and gets a place at the drama institute, only to be exposed to equally unorthodox teaching. He too is prompted to reveal and use private and personal experiences to enhance his art. When his class have to devise an end of year production, the school affair is picked as the central theme.

Eventually the two strands come together with potentially disastrous consequences, but though the plot drives the book forward it is the teacher–pupil interaction that grips.

The teachers, significantly known only by their titles (the saxophone teacher, the head of acting, the head of movement, etc.) are, or try to be, manipulative; but is this for their own gratification or for the benefit of the learners? The pupils mainly recognise the attempt but face the same dilemma – is it for their improvement or are they just being used for a vicarious reliving of a long gone youth.

The concept of performance is central to the way the story is told. Time shifts uncertainly; real life events morph into staged performances as, for example, the saxophone teacher projects scenes from her own past onto the intimate conversations with her pupils. This sounds more complex than it reads, because it is done seamlessly well.

This unusual novel (Catton’s first - her second won the 2013 Man Booker prize) is compelling and thought-provoking. The easily flowing prose and the slow reveals keep the pages turning to the end, and the mind turning even after that.