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“For when you want a coming-of-age novel with a dark twist. In this provocative novel, the past isn’t always as far away as you think.” —The Skimm
With the emotional power of Normal People you think.” —The Skimm
With the emotional power of Normal People and the reflective haze of The Girls, a magnetic novel that moves between present-day Los Angeles and a British boarding school in the 1990s, exploring the destructive relationships between teenage girls.
Can we ever really escape our pasts?
The girls of St John the Divine, an elite English boarding school, were notorious for flipping their hair, harassing teachers, chasing boys, and chain-smoking cigarettes. They were fiercely loyal, sharp-tongued, and cuttingly humorous in the way that only teenage girls can be. For Josephine, now in her thirties, the years at St John were a lifetime ago. She hasn’t spoken to another Divine in fifteen years, not since the day the school shuttered its doors in disgrace.
Yet now Josephine inexplicably finds herself returning to her old stomping grounds. The visit provokes blurry recollections of those doomed final weeks that rocked the community. Ruminating on the past, Josephine becomes obsessed with her teenage identity and the forgotten girls of her one-time orbit. With each memory that resurfaces, she circles closer to the violent secret at the heart of the school’s scandal. But the more Josephine recalls, the further her life unravels, derailing not just her marriage and career, but her entire sense of self.
Suspenseful, provocative, and compulsively readable, The Divines explores the tension between the lives we lead as adults and the experiences that form us, probing us to consider how our memories as adults compel us to reexamine our pasts.
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The Divines is a cool, chilling and elegant novel that intrigues and compels the reader, while filleting the absurdities of British class hierarchy with a very, very sharp knife. In Eaton’s stylish and controlled prose, the oppressive atmosphere of a girls’ boarding school becomes the site of a violent and mysterious act, but also a lens through which to examine the intoxicating and unnerving power of adolescent sexuality, the dangers and consolations of friendship, and the toxic nature of the class divide. It’s a terrific, entertaining and astute work and one of considerable relevance to the way we live now.
The Divines is a scintillating coming-of-age story about the brutal bonds of female boarding school friendships, class prejudices, and the ways in which false memories can take the place of truth. Sephine is an unflinching and utterly convincing narrator. I lapped up every delicious detail.
A new mother tries to reconcile her former ‘mean girl’ past at a shuttered boarding school in this riveting and darkly comic addition to the campus novel canon. The Divines is as provocative and daring as teenagerhood, itself.
Girls are vicious’, a character in The Divines says towards the end, and Ellie Eaton has given us every ounce of that viciousness, meticulously portioned and weighed, the pain of it held up to the light. Seductive and uncomfortable in equal measure, the real raw strange runs through this book, that indigestible part of the human experience we all choke on from time to time.
A potent novel about what it means to remember and how responsible we are for the actions of our youth. Seething with teenage sexuality, friendship and that peculiarly British obsession, class, this is an absorbing read.
Twisty and twisted, The Divines is exquisitely paced — a haunting novel about identity, the cruelties of youth, and the blurry line between nostalgia and obsession. In precise, lacerating detail, Eaton weaves two worlds together: one built around the odd rituals, brutal logic, and savage social structures put forth by a group of teen girls; the other centered on the traumatic implications of growing up privileged but unsupervised, elite but lonely, cut off from one’s desire. This is a blistering, brilliant debut.
I don’t know what it was, but there was something incredibly readable about The Divines by Ellie Eaton. I love books set at boarding schools, and I loved the setting for this book. I also liked the way Eaton mixed things up by having the dual timelines, present-day follows Josephine when she’s adult, and the past follows her while she is at St John the Divine. It was like a more serious take on the movie Mean Girls, and man were these girls vicious. They called themselves Divines because of the name of the school and a lot of them were very nasty. It was interesting seeing the juxtaposition of the girls at the school versus everyone else who they called townies, and the author delves deep into relationships between teenage girls.
I listened to the audio while following along in my book and it went very quickly. Imogen Church is the narrator and she really killed it with her narration. I thought she was perfect as Josephine and I couldn’t imagine anyone else reading this intense and uncomfortable novel. The audiobook is a little over 11 hours but I somehow managed to listen to the whole thing in one day because I had to know how it would all end. I really enjoyed the way Eaton chose to end The Divines and I definitely wasn’t expecting the very end or what the violent secret ended up being. This is a very tough read at times, and it gives new meaning to the saying girls are cruel. It is such a unique and thought-provoking debut, and I have to say the cover was an odd but perfect fit for the book.
I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
A girl’s boarding school in England, snotty upper class girls and the townies who resent them, a tragedy that haunts one of them into adulthood … what’s not to like? I have to admit I’m drawn to boarding school books and this one had me turning the pages.
I listened to the audiobook of The Divines, and before I get into the review of the novel itself, let me tell you how amazing Imogen Church is as a narrator. She performs a myriad of accents and voices, and she utterly captivated me. I will listen to any book she narrates because I know she will keep me engaged.
And now, onto The Divines.
I loved this book, even as Ellie Eaton continually broke my heart. She did not try to redeem Josephine, and she never tried to make Josephine greater than she was. Eaton understands Josephine’s sense of feeling less than, of otherness. Yes, she’s wealthy. Yes, she’s privileged and entitled and economically very much an Other. But at St. John the Divine, she is a lowercase other, not quite fitting in here or there. She no longer clicks with her former best friend, and she refuses to try to click with her roommate Gerry because the rest of the school hates that girl. Josephine is a pleaser. She is the girl with her nose pressed against the window, desperate for someone to open it and let her in.
Eaton moves between Josephine’s time as a Divine and her time in the present as a married woman, struggling to come to terms with what being a Divine meant to her and how it continues to influence her life. I didn’t always like Josephine, but I suspect Josephine understands that. As much as she wants to be liked, no one finds her more unworthy than she does.
You may not like many of the characters in this book, which surely is intentional. In a story that is all about the power of memory, Josephine refuses to cast a glowing patina on herself and her fellow Divines. She knows who she was and who they were. What she wants to understand is how to make peace with that.
I think Eaton’s story demands discussion, particularly in a book club. Please hit up the comments and let me know what you think of Josephine and the Divines, as well as her husband Jürgen.
My Review of The Divines by Ellie Eaton; published by William Morrow an Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers
What a great debut novel for Ellie Eaton! High school years can be the most daunting of years for many. Then add an all female boarding school for the well-to-do and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Ellie creates an easily believable world where teenage girls partake in experimentation and an abundance of reckless behaviors. The protagonist, Josephine, takes us through memory lane all the while dealing with her own current demons. The stories woven in The Divines are brutally raw and, at times, a little rough to read. The mystery entwined throughout will keep you guessing, and turning the pages. This was certainly a different read for me; however, I recommend The Divines by Ellie Eaton as we all need a respite from our norm.
This is an unbiased review of an ARC I received through a Goodreads giveaway.
#WilliamMorrow
#harpercollins
THE DIVINES by Ellie Eaton was a compelling read with a main character that I never could come to like or sympathize with, which is, perhaps, the point. Why did I continue to read when I didn’t like the main character? Simply because Eaton created a novel with a complex character who was multifaceted and a puzzle for the reader to take apart and analyze. I kept reading because the story was well-written and I had so many questions to be answered.
THE DIVINES will invoke powerful emotions as you read it, and it left me more than a little unsettled. Though it wasn’t quite my cup of tea, it was hard to put down. I did put it down feeling that there should have been something just a bit more, like there was something missing. Overall, this is an impressive debut novel by Ellie Eaton and I would be interested in seeing what she comes up with next.
Thank you to the publisher for an advanced copy of this novel. All opinions are my own and freely given.
#thedivines #ellieeaton #williammorrow #harpercollins
4 1/2 stars
This was one of the best books about kids at a boarding school that I’ve read, and I’ve read several. It offers an excellent look at adolescents and the lack of self-confidence they have, the cruelty they demonstrate to each other and themselves. The biggest takeaway from this book, for me, was to show how what you are as a teen is usually very different from the person you grow into.
One seemingly inconsequential action done in anger can change your life and haunt you for the rest of your life. Yet, despite what you believe happened, you can be mistaken in your interpretation of that event. Sometimes, years later, you may learn that it didn’t play out as you thought it had.
While this book doesn’t have an open ending, it does fail to spell out how things work out between Sephina and her husband, Jurgen. The reader also never learns how she and Jurgen first met. Those both seem to be important bits of information, since Jurgen plays such a big part in getting Joe/Sephina to assess all that happened in her teens and the role she played then. It seems wrong that I know more about Stuart, her friend’s brother, than I know about Jurgen.
It was still a good book and an interesting read, part mystery, part psychological study of teenagesrs. Not having gone to boarding school, it was informative to learn how more about the life these English girls faced away from home, how little supervision they had, how much time they had on their own to get into mischief.
I received an advanced reader’s copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley. I thank them for their generosity, but it had no effect on this review. All opinions in this review reflect my true and honest reactions to reading this book.
St. John the Divine was a private girls’ school once located in Oxfordshire England. Generations of wealthy young girls attended. Now, many if the buildings are gone and the others are used for flats and business offices.
Josephine was a student when she was younger. She was called Jo then. Newly married to Jurgen, she stops by the site of the school and at his request, she begins to tell him about life at the school.
The Divines were rich, sexually precocious, called each other by boys’ names, and the locals hated them. They were from rich families, entitled, and spoiled. Many of them have mothers who went to the school as well.
I really expected something big to come out of this story but I was left with a feeling of Who Cares? Teenage girls are all over the place. Some of them tend to be the bullies and others are the bullied. They feel gawky and unsure of themselves, contending with acne and hormonal changes. I have read other books about boarding schools that had a good plot so I was truly looking forward to reading this. Now, I feel let down. Bratty girls some of whom never grew up. Sorry. Not my cup of tea.
Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Eaton’s literary boarding school debut has it all: pretentious, snobbish, viscously cruel teenage girls. Drama, drugs, alcohol, smoking, and sex. However, this is not your typical boarding school story. Eaton takes us on a wild ride into the psychological world of dark academia with her extraordinary writing skills.
In The Divines, we follow our narrator, Josephine, in alternating chapters as she recalls and processes who she was, what happened all those years ago, and how it all shaped her into who she is. It’s like a complex character study where Eaton focuses on just how tenuous our memories are.
What I liked: Eaton’s incredible writing and how she addresses the negative effects of elitist education by having Sephine (this is the name Josephine goes by in her adult life) send her Mother an article about Boarding School Syndrome, which is very real and includes anger, depression, anxiety, failure to sustain relationships, fear of abandonment, etc.
What I didn’t like: It just really dragged on for me, and this is with me listening to the audiobook version narrated by my absolute favorite narrator (and I listen to a lot of audiobooks, folks), so it’s not that. It could just be that I wasn’t in the right headspace for it with all that’s going on right now.
If you like mean girls boarding school trope, and like literary fiction, you’ll probably like this one. If you don’t like more complex reads, and the obvious boarding school trope, then it’s probably not for you.
This was a well written book that drew me in and yet was also a difficult read given the subject matter. Spoiled entitled teenaged girls at an elite boarding school that valued money and peerage more than morals and decent values…gee what can possibly go wrong? There are no warm fuzzies here, and yet I highly recommend it. Can we ever escape our past? It makes us who we are in, but what happens when we revisit our past and it is not what we remember it to be? And then what happens when you start to recall what really happened? We meet Josephine and join her on a journey that toggles between her time in the 1990’s at an exclusive private school and present day life. The private school she attended taught more than what was in the text books. It taught them to be mean vicious cruel young women and that she who has the most wins. Basically not the kind of person anyone should aspire to be or want to be befriend. Years later on a visit to her former school with her husband Josephine (main character) is met dealing with all kinds of emotions and memories. She encounters a local person in front of what used to be the school and is verbally assaulted with vile language and is spit at. Her husband us stunned and his desire to know why she was met with such hostility helps to foster her path down memory lane, begrudgingly. She and her classmates were truly despicable and their behavior and attitude were fostered at the school as if the norm. Their disdain for the people and town in which they lived was palpable and heinous. It is not an easy book to listen to and I found at times I needed to take a break from it.It tackles entitlement, the financial divide, creating your own identity when expected to be just like everyone else, sexuality, friendships both real and forced fake ones, going along to get along and so much more. It was an emotional difficult listen, but one that was well worth my time. The narration was good and will draw you in from the start.
This book surprised me with how much I enjoyed it – capturing my attention from the beginning and making me read to the end. I needed to know how everyone turned out. The book made me sentimental thinking about friendships and memories that shaped my own life including roommates at college – when I first felt the freedoms and entitlement of youth that Joe experienced. We were close- like sisters. We were obnoxious at times. I wonder if they would remember events the same way – with good memories and some regrets? I wonder if, like Joe, I would be surprised at how they would describe me from back then. When I was reading I also thought about the way some college students treated the “townies.” We thought ourselves better than even though we did not know them. This was before society prompted us to think about our privilege. I prided myself that I was not one of the mean girls, although I could be quick to action if someone picked on someone in my inner circle. I enjoyed the writing style and the way the author chose to share the story from two different points in Joe/Sephine’s life. It was important that she finally gave herself permission to come to grips with the past. I wonder if she will try and find Lauren so she can truly be at peace. Highly recommend this debut novel. A great look into the adolescent mindset – wanting to fit in and be loved, The book had themes of bullying and underage drinking that may be hard for some readers, but the characters were honest and believable.
An accident that occurred 14 years ago continues to haunt one former student of the exclusive private school, St. John the Divine. Sephine returns to the now-closed academy while on her honeymoon and reluctantly shares scant details with her new husband. An odd encounter sparks memories of her time there, and the remainder of The Divines by Ellie Eaton is devoted to flashes forward and back to those days. Sephine does not fondly recall her teen years spent as a “Divine.” She struggles to reconcile the selfishness, privilege and entitlement that she experienced while attending, and questions her own morality and behavior as a spoiled member of that class. Her skewed perspective and opinionated narrative is the only guide the reader has to sort out the details of the incident and the events leading up to that day. Sephine (known as Joe in her school days) as a teen was a pitiable mixture of self-absorption and low confidence, predictably shallow and always striving for acceptance. When she befriends a “Townie,” she simultaneously fears exile from her peers and revels in her “slumming” adventure. The people of the town also have a deep resentment of the school, which is understandable given the student’s treatment of them and their reliance upon it as a singular source of employment. The girls from the school wreak havoc and are not held accountable for their misdeeds outside its gates. The tragic accident that launches the book results from a tradition gone awry and highlights the feral nature that can emerge when there are no consequences. As an adult, Sephine has difficulty with relationships and attachments to others. She blames her awkwardness on the school’s negative influence and the traumatizing events that took place so long ago. As she obsesses over the past and grips her distorted memories more tightly, she loses her stability and happiness in the present. Eaton presents a narrator that is realistic and deeply flawed, and she captures her teenage angst with skill. The Divines is a quick, fun read, and would likely appeal to young adult readers and fans of “Pretty Little Liars” and “Gossip Girl.”
Thanks to the author and William Morrow/HarperCollins for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an impartial review.
Thank you NetGalley for this ARC of Ellie Eaton’s The Divines.
The Divines follows narrator Josephine as she reflects on her last year (1973) at a posh boarding school in England, her group of friends and a traumatic final event that has left an indelible mark on her life. The book takes on many themes that resonate true today – privilege, bullying, the need for acceptance, and the lasting psychological impact choices made as teenagers can have as adults.
The course of the book follows Josephine and how, in adulthood, her school experience has become an obsession for her which does lead her to confront her past and attempt to claim responsibility for her actions. I can’t say that I particularly enjoyed the book due to the difficult themes and characters who were not very likable and lacked empathy. However, it was an absorbing, cringe-worthy depiction of teenaged behavior gone wrong. It will stay with you long after you’ve read the final page.