Apparently a classic example of 19th-century narrative, set in the 19th century, with all the right-sounding syntax, clothing and props, the project twists into another shape altogether as we read, and continue to read. Whether what was taking place on the page was an account of events or only words in a script, no more than a rehearsal for what may or may not have happened … none of it mattered. The plot – a group of teenage girls acting out the consequences of a sex scandal at their school – was set loose from the very premise of storytelling. Her first novel, The Rehearsal, was a marvellously peculiar and technically perfect story of a story within a story – or stories, actually – that had the reader's mind spinning with the complexities of its narrative invention. E leanor Catton is an extraordinary writer.
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