Rehearsal: The Life of Rehearsal In Advance Close to reality but not reality

Storyteller: The rock falls to the ground

The book sent today is the Booker Prize-winning book "Dress rehearsal".

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When I was young, I used to think about life bitterly, and sometimes I would suddenly talk to myself like chicken blood, as if I had brought my own light on the stage, and the words I said might laugh now, just like the feeling of watching "Rehearsal", like drama more than fiction, but like life more than stories.

One of the places where rehearsal takes place is a drama school, filled with a variety of theories and methods of acting. The news of the teacher-student relationship at Abiglanchi High School next door became the fodder for the drama school's students' annual play; students continued to practice various performances, using various methods to try to get close to the protagonist of the event to achieve the reality of the performance.

The way the author Eleanor Caton lets everyone talk to each other endlessly in the book makes the novel seem rationally structured and straightforward, as if the characters on the stage always have to say their inner words with lines, they talk about their views on each other, their views on the news, their own confusion and entanglement, and even their own fantasies, as if a big drama is staged in front of the reader.

But the direct reaction of Victoria and Saladin, the protagonists of the storm center - teacher-student love, has not been described positively at all, just as the eye of the tornado is the calmest, have they ever had a relationship? How do they choose each other? When and how did they start the relationship? ...... It's all like a black hole that draws everyone's attention and curiosity and then swallows it up into endless silence. No one has the courage to ask for the answer, but dares to rehearse it over and over in their own minds, trying to restore the truth they think they are.

The author's tone is very calm, so that people can't see the habitual writing of young writers who put themselves into a certain role and instilled a certain life experience into this role.

So the drama comes from the truth, and it eats the truth, but when you think that what they say is the truth, the figures of Victoria and Saladin will inadvertently appear between the lines, reminding the reader: "Eh, we are not paying for these statements." ”

So the rehearsal is a play, and the rehearsal itself is like a defense mechanism, that is, the process that the students of the drama school must go through in order to complete the performance assignments, and the preparation of the children before entering the adult world. Because children always seem to have the opportunity to start again, so growth is like a test to finally achieve a performance of human beings, on the way to the adult world, children try to live the same life as adults, love and sex, pain and confusion...

They experience the same emotions and react the same way, but there's always a little bit of staggered distance. Like the story's heroine, Victoria's sister Isolde, she stands closest to the truth, but knows nothing.

In this book, the author wrote several teachers, just like the teachers we remembered back then, rarely remembered the names directly, and always used the subject pronouns: acting teacher, physical teacher, vocal teacher... But the only teacher the author portrays outside of the drama school is the saxophone teacher, who is sometimes mean and calm (usually facing parents) and sometimes gentle and kind (usually facing children).

In the book, she provides one of the most relevant dialogues: "Remember, for your daughter, all the life knowledge she has accumulated over the years is just a dress rehearsal relative to all the things she will experience in the future." Remember that the thing she's most interested in is that everything is going in the wrong direction. ......”

She breaks through the essence, but she is lost in her own emotional world. The children treated her not so much as a teacher who taught her skills as a psychiatrist, and Isolde, Julia, and Britchit came here to wipe the instruments and show their hearts, and she looked at them, as if she were looking at herself at a certain node, giving some people empathy, giving some guidance, giving some people a paradoxical jealousy.

Thanks to the Booker Prize, not only improved caton's housing conditions, but also made her debut work of young boys and girls and the crooked lines, not buried in a bunch of foreign novels to earn tears of emotional stories and thousands of suspense plots.

Even if we turn the pages of the book, we find that behind such a complex structure and wandering mental path is the déjà vu that we have already lived or thought about. To relive such a heart, follow the protagonist to another self-entanglement thinking, may not be as enjoyable as the current youthful novels with dreamy love or sublimated blood. But after all, life needs rehearsals again and again, so that the next time we play, we can shine.

Isolde blew six bars and stumbled.

"I didn't practice," she said at once, "but I have a reason, do you want to listen?" ”

The saxophone teacher looked at her while sipping black tea. Excuses were pretty much her favorite thing.

Isolde took a moment to smooth out his short skirt while preparing. She took a breath.

"I was watching TV last night," she said, "and Dad came in with a serious face, his hand slightly tugging at his tie, as if he were breathless from it, and finally he simply untied it and put it aside—"

She untied the saxophone from the strap and put it on the chair, imitating her father's appearance to loosen the strap as if it were particularly tight.

"--He said sit down, even though I've been sitting there, and rubbed my hands hard."

Isolde rubbed his hands vigorously.

"He said, your mother thinks I shouldn't have told you this yet, but your sister was bullied by a teacher at school." At this time she glanced quickly at the saxophone teacher, and then looked away, "and then added, 'Sexual assault', I am afraid that I think the teacher just said a few words to her because of small things like not following traffic rules." ”

The overhead light dimmed, leaving only a lamp shining on her, flickering with pale blue light, and the cool light was like the fluorescence emitted by the TV screen when it was switched on and off. The saxophone teacher retreated into the shadows, half of his face was livid, and the other half was pale, looming with the light.

Then he began to whisper in a strange and worried voice about the man who did not know whether it was Saladin or what kind of gentleman. Tells how he taught advanced jazz bands, orchestras, and advanced jazz orchestras, and how classes were all scheduled on Wednesday mornings, one after another. If I wanted to join a jazz band, I would run into him in the sixth grade, but because jazz band classes conflicted with the time of the no-board basketball class, I had to choose between the two.

Dad looked at me with this frightened expression, as if I was about to do something crazy, or suddenly became extremely emotional, so that he did not know how to face it. So I said, 'How do you know?' He replied—"

Isolde crouched down beside the couch, spread his hands, and said solemnly, "Honey, as far as I know, he behaved very inconspicuously at first, sometimes just gently putting his hand on her shoulder, like this. ”

Isolde reached out his fingertips and lightly touched the top of the saxophone, who lay on his side in the chair and began to make a uniform sound as her fingers touched, like a heartbeat. The saxophone teacher sat there, very quiet.

"Then, occasionally when the two of them are alone, he'll come close to her and sniff her hair—"

She pressed her cheek against the saxophone and sniffed all the way down its side—

Just like that, full of temptation but shy and ambiguous, because he didn't know if she would accept it, didn't want to let himself out early. But she was obedient, because she also liked him a little, even a little bit of love at first sight, and soon his hand went down, and then down—"

Isolde's hand descended the saxophone and wandered along the edge of the horn—

"—downwards, and she seems to be responding, sometimes she smiles at him in class and makes his heart beat faster, and when they're in the instrument room or alone after school, or driving in his car for a ride -- sometimes they drive somewhere -- in short, when they're alone, he'll call her 'my gypsy girl.'" He would call her over and over again, 'My Gypsy girl,' and she wished she could say something in response to him, some whispers that could whisper in his ear, some of the most special love words he had never heard. ”

The background music stopped, and Isolde looked at her teacher and said, "But she can't think of anything." ”

The lights turned on again, as usual. Isolde angrily threw himself into the single sofa. "But anyway," she said angrily, "she has run out of time to think about it anymore, it's too late. Her friends had begun to notice her recent anomaly, the kind of way she lowered her chin and turned her side to the side, as if flirting with someone, and things began to spiral out of control, like a castle made of cards, not attacking itself. ”

"I see why you don't have time to practice anymore." Saxophone teacher said.

"Even this morning," Said Isolde, "I blew a few scales or something before I went to school, but as soon as I started, she looked like, 'Can you have a little conscience?' and then she pretended to cry and ran out of the room." As soon as I looked at it, I knew she was pretending, because if she was really crying, she wouldn't have run away, and I wish I could see it! Isolde poked his knee with the tip of the needle in his short skirt, "They think of her now as a goddamn craft!" ”

"Is that abnormal?" The saxophone teacher asked.

Isolde rolled his eyes at her. "It's disgusting," she said, "it's as disgusting as children dressing up their pets like real people, putting on clothes and wigs, and then having them stand up and walk on two hind legs and take pictures." That's it, but it's more perverted than that, because you can see how much she enjoys it. ”

"I'm sure your sister won't find that a treat." Saxophone Teacher's Road.

"Dad said that he would have to wait until Mr. Saladin got the judge he deserved, and he would go to jail, and he didn't know how many years it would take." Isolde said, "All the criminal investigation documents say 'molested girls', but by then there are still any girls, she has long since grown into an adult like him." It's like someone deliberately destroying a crime scene and rebuilding something clean and shiny in place to cover it up completely. ”

"Isolde," said the saxophone teacher, in a tone of affirmation unprecedented, "I believe they are afraid only because they know that sin has not disappeared, but has crept into her body and sprouted rapidly, while the seed has long since disappeared forever in an unknown and nowhere to be found." His sin was just an act, a stupid, devastating groping in the bright, smokey sunshine of the midday. And she- her sin is a state, a pathology that has been deeply rooted in the heart and will never be able to be eliminated. ”

"My dad didn't believe in original sin," Isolde said, "and we're atheists." ”

"People always have to suffer a little loss to learn to be enlightened." Saxophone teacher said.

"Let me tell you why they're so scared." "They are afraid because she already has all their knowledge, and they are afraid because they have no secrets in front of her," Isolde said. ”

The saxophone teacher suddenly got up and walked toward the window. After a long silence, Isolde spoke again:

"Dad just said, 'Honey, I don't know how this happened, but the important thing is that now that we know, this kind of thing won't happen again.'" ”

……

The title is: What instrument does Isolde play?

a. Clarinet

b. Oboe

c. Saxophone

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