PRESS RELEASE FROM VICTORIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

‘The Rehearsal’ Wows Them in the UK, “AS DEBUTS GO, THIS ONE IS ASTRAL”Eleanor Catton, a remarkable young New Zealand writer, has been praised in the first international reviews for her novel ‘The Rehearsal’.

“As debuts go, this one is astral – as well as teasing, intelligent and knowing. It made me think of ‘Bonjour Tristesse’ (1955) and of its author, Françoise Sagan, another young writer of stellar talent.”Tom Adair THE SCOTSMAN “Timeframes overlap and collide in this ingenious ontological kaleidoscope of a debut, but the experimentalism — which demands that the reader keep all her wits about her — is tempered by a real knack for narrative and a cast of painfully familiar teenage characters who are all desperate to be as confident, cool, charismatic and funny as possible. These are qualities that the extraordinary Eleanor Catton has in spades.”Melissa Katsoulis THE TIMESThe DAILY TELEGRAPH reviewer, in an equally enthusiastic review, wrote that “Catton shows she can address the big themes in life while remaining alert to small details.”

Victoria University Press published ‘The Rehearsal’ here in NZ last year and it has been nominated in the fiction and best first book of fiction categories of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards to be announced on 27 July in Auckland. The Granta edition of Eleanor’s book has just been published in the UK and a Little, Brown US edition is planned.