Private lives tangle with public performance, and the scandal and its effects play out in the whole community...
...Catton's novel is filled with drama tutors who are acutely aware of their own performances; insecure adolescents grappling with their sexuality and social lives at the same time; and teachers who manipulate their students, like puppets, for murky (and sometimes suspect!) motives.
The most alarmingly odd and compelling character, a saxophone teacher whose commentary pervades the book, pronounces that young adulthood is merely a "rehearsal for everything that comes after"...