A school teacher has an affair with a female student.. With such a theme you might expect the novel to be a bleak tract on a community unravelling or even shattering, with people, especially young people, especially girls, falling about ruined. Not so. Above all the novel is witty.

Characters known only as the "saxophone teacher" and "Stanley's father" are sardonic commentators, unsentimental and wildly unparental. The students are far from passive or clueless, though they do resent their own lack of knowledge. Their impatience at the teacher's well-meaning safety seminars, their blatant envy, is hilarious, yet never glib. And then there are the drama students who turn the whole incident into a play, which seems to also be, somehow, the novel.

"The Rehearsal" has already garnered a lot of attention. It was winner of a Montana award, and longlisted in the Guardian fiction award. You can read an extract online. There's a text interview with Catton here and one on Radio New Zealand. There's also an excellent review in the Listener, which highlights the sheer literary craftiness of the book. But don't be put off, this is superbly readable.