Reviews with content warning for Adult/minor relationship - De repetitie

Reviews tagging 'Adult/minor relationship'

De repetitie by Eleanor Catton

10 reviews

fkshg8465's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.75

I loved Birnam Wood so much, and so I was really excited to read this one. It was a big let down. I feel like I watched an episode of this on Euphoria…

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a_novel_craving's review against another edition

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funny reflective medium-paced

3.5

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bookmaddie's review against another edition

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challenging emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

THE REHEARSAL is a complex, inquisitive, and nuanced exploration of girlhood and the performance of personhood. A high schooler is discovered having an affair with her jazz band teacher, and the effects are felt deeply within the tight-knit community. Through the eyes of schoolgirls and townspeople, Catton explores the aftermath of scandal and how it upends relationships of all kinds—lovers, mothers and daughters, teachers and students.

And while doing this, she also manages to create a narrative that holds many performances within it—a play, a storyteller, two girls trying to figure out how they want to be. It makes you wonder what parts of the novel actually happened and what was an imagination, reinforcing the nature of the scandal, as no one knows what actually happened. Clever! I don't think this narrative style will be for everyone, but I found it endlessly fascinating and clever.

Catton's writing of the schoolgirls is outstanding—they felt perfectly their age, with the teenage distractions, confidence, playacting, and moments of wisdom. The interiority she is known for shines through here in a more cutting, crisp way than her later novels.

I really enjoyed this novel, and it is definitely one that will stick around in my head for awhile. I'm sad that I don't have any more of Catton's writing to enjoy, but maybe it's just time for a reread of THE LUMINARIES.

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serendipitysbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

The Rehearsal is Eleanor Catton’s debut novel. It explores the fallout from a high school teacher’s relationship with a student and also revolves around two rehearsals, one for a music recital, the other for a college play. It delivers the intricate sentences, lush prose and cleverly constructed plots Catton’s later works are noted for. I didn’t enjoy this as much due to the structure which made it deliberately hard to differentiate fact from fiction, real-life drama from on-stage drama.

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shanno_h0's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

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lenin_lover_69's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The ending was quiet abrupt and I'm not sure whether I fully grasped what the writer was trying to do but I enjoyed the confusion of it all. The writing was so good, reminded me of Jaclyn Moriarty but darker, it was unexpectedly funny. There was a lot of acute and sharp observations about teenage girls and sexuality which I was really into as well.

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