{"id":441,"date":"2008-09-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T01:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=441"},"modified":"2025-05-03T14:00:42","modified_gmt":"2025-05-03T02:00:42","slug":"the-rehearsal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/09\/13\/the-rehearsal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rehearsal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Eleanor Catton<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Victoria University Press<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, September 13th 2008<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The Rehearsal<\/em> by Eleanor Catton embodies Hamlet\u2019s existential metaphor of life as performance, in both form and substance.&nbsp;&nbsp; The fulcrum upon which the action centres is an illicit relationship between a high-school teacher and one of his pupils, scandalising the community and exciting fascination and envy among her school colleagues.&nbsp; The plot moves between preparations for a musical concert by students of the high school, and a play by the first year students of the adjacent drama school, both shaped by the affair and linked by Isolde, the disgraced girl\u2019s sister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Catton, a graduate of Bill Manhire\u2019s writing school, takes the risk of discarding realism for a structure that echoes theatrical performance, even as far as including stage directions for some scenes.&nbsp; Players exchange parts, move between participating in and acting out events, speak in soliloquy with an insight and voice that transcends their nominal role.&nbsp; This is not an \u2018easy\u2019 book; the intellectual cleverness risks alienating some of the audience (I was reminded of the controversy that surrounded the 2005 awarding on the Man-Booker to John Banville\u2019s <em>The Sea<\/em>) and limited my empathy towards most (although not all) of its characters.&nbsp; For all that, <em>The Rehearsal <\/em>is a thoughtful and rewarding exploration of adult\/adolescent relationships, the baffling and self-conscious maze of teenage sexual awareness, and its mismatch with social expectations.&nbsp; All in all, a performance well worth the price of the ticket.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eleanor Catton<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Otago Daily Times review September 13th 2008<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[75,82,370,500,18],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-75","tag-eleanor-catton","tag-fiction","tag-nz-author","tag-odt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1400,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions\/1400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}