The Rehearsal (B Format)

The debut novel from the Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries and Birnam Wood.

As a rumour spreads about a teacher sleeping with a student, a group of teenage girls are jolted into new awareness of their own vertiginous sexuality. Ripples move outward in unexpected directions: the saxophone teacher directs the girls in workshopping their desires, and the local drama school adapts the scandal for a show.  

Every action is a performance, and every platform a stage. The boundaries between private and public begin to dissolve – or perhaps were never there.

Exhilarating and original, The Rehearsal is at once a tender evocation of its young protagonists and a shrewd exposé of emotional compromise. It reveals the singular daring that has defined Catton’s career.

'As debuts go, this one is astral – as well as teasing, intelligent and knowing.' —Tom Adair, The Scotsman

'The book of the year for me was without doubt The Rehearsal, by the preternaturally gifted New Zealand author Eleanor Catton . . . Perverse, erotic, complex, funny, experimental, and written with the confidence and courage of a true artist.' —Paul Murray, author of The Bee Sting

'The Rehearsal is controlled, elegant and utterly readable, even at its most slippery.' —Adrian Turpin, The Financial Times

Eleanor Catton is the author of The Luminaries (2013), winner of the Booker Prize, the Canadian Governor General’s Literary Award, and the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction. Her debut novel, The Rehearsal (2009), won the New Zealand Best First Book of Fiction Award and the Betty Trask Prize, and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize and longlisted for the Orange Prize. As a screenwriter, she adapted The Luminaries for television, and Jane Austen’s Emma for feature film. Her third novel, Birnam Wood (2023), was shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction. Born in 1985 in Canada and raised in New Zealand, she lives in Britain.

Cover photograph: Yvonne Todd, Mordene (2005)
Cover design: Todd Atticus