Insecure and lonely, Josephine befriends Lauren McKibbin (whose older brother, Stuart, handles maintenance for the school), despite a prohibition on socializing with 'townies.' As the girls grow closer, Josephine develops a crush on Stuart and tries to retain the good graces of her old crew by joining in on their bullying of Gerry, even after Gerry helps her deal with an upsetting incident involving Stuart. Before the fall, Gerry had long been bullied by a group of classmates led by Josephine's frosty best friend, Skipper. In flashbacks to the mid-1990s, it's revealed that Josephine's lower-class roommate, Gerry Lake, suffered a fall from their dorm window that threatened her figure-skating career and led to a scandal that forced the school to close. Impossible to put down' Refinery29Įaton's intelligent debut follows freelance writer Josephine as she reflects on her past as a bully at a now-defunct all-girls English boarding school. 'A c ool, chilling and elegant novel' Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent

With the emotional power of My Dark Vanessa and the reflective haze of The Girls, The Divines is a compulsive debut exploring the intoxicating, destructive relationships between teenage girls. But the more Josephine recalls, the further her life unravels, derailing not just her marriage and career, but her entire sense of self. With each memory that resurfaces, she circles closer to the ugly secret at the heart of the school's scandal. īut an impromptu visit reawakens blurry recollections of those doomed final weeks that rocked the community. She hasn't spoken to another Divine in fifteen years, not since the day the school shut its doors in disgrace. But for Josephine, now in her thirties, her time at St. They were fiercely loyal, sharp-tongued, and cutting in the way that only teenage girls can be. John the Divine, were notorious for flipping their hair, harassing teachers, chasing boys and chain-smoking cigarettes. The girls of elite English boarding school, St.

My mother was Divine and her mother before that, which isn't uncommon.Īlthough that was at a time when being Divine meant something. Set in the final days before a shocking tragedy forces an elite boarding school to shut its doors for good, Ellie Eaton's The Divines is a razor-sharp debut that asks the question: were you really as good as you remember?

Ellie eaton the divines