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    The Divines: A Novel
    The Divines: A Novel
    The Divines: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Divines: A Novel

    Written by Ellie Eaton

    Narrated by Imogen Church

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    The Elin Hilderbrand Literati Book Club Pick!

    Recommended by Entertainment Weekly * CNN * Harper's BAZAAR * E! Online * Refinery 29 * Bustle * Shondaland * Vulture * The Millions * Lit Hub * Electric Literature * Parade * MSN * and more!

    “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

    “[S]o beautifully written that I marked lines—for their perceptive genius—on nearly every page... This perfectly paced novel examines class structures and sexual identity and betrayals and tragedy in a way that had be both wanting to rip through the pages and wanting to savor each sentence until the extremely satisfying end."" —Elin Hilderbrand for Literati

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJan 19, 2021
    ISBN9780063012226
    Author

    Ellie Eaton

    Ellie Eaton is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Guardian, the Observer, and Time Out. Former writer-in-residence at a men’s prison in the United Kingdom, she holds an M.A. in creative writing from Royal Holloway, University of London, and was awarded a Kerouac Project residency. Born and raised in England, Ellie now lives in Los Angeles with her family. The Divines is her first novel.

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    Reviews for The Divines

    3.5/5

    120 ratings7 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I get it: we all learn from our past and hope to make amends from mistakes when it's possible. That's what this book was about which focused on a woman reflecting on her school days. Slow going with the first half of the book about a wealthy girls group called "the divines" that feels superior over the workers of her town - the "townies." The last half was better as the plot started to come together. But the end was my favorite as the drama was finally over.

      Josephine shares her secret past with her handsome husband for the first time on their honeymoon. Then she keeps drifting back wondering what happened to the people of her school since she moved away. She returns to her school to find answers about her past friends and those she picked on.

      My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read this advanced copy.
    • 3/5
      Well written but…a dark depressing story about horrible people and not a single lkkeable character.
    • 4/5
      Narration excellent and a good storyline. Overall well written, but sometimes seemed too dragged out
    • 5/5
      Best I’ve listened to in a long time. Happy intriguing, realistic, funny! Very satisfying!
    • 3/5
      Josephine is one of the Divines, girls attending an expensive boarding school in England. In her fifth year, however, things go badly wrong, beginning with her sharing a room with an unpopular girl, which jeopardizes her social standing and ending in mayhem and tragedy. Going back and forth between this pivotal year and Josephine as a married adult, Ellie Eaton tells the story of what happens when over-privileged girls are kept together with too little supervision and what happens when a girl who has always been a follower is put in a position where her values are tested. I'm a sucker for a school story, especially one set it such a different world, but this one ultimately pulled its punches in ways that left me dissatisfied. I did like how Josephine was passive in her own story, how she was unable to parse the motivations of others, or even understand herself. Feeling left out of her friend group had her willing to make friends with a townie, a girl who both encourages Josephine to take a new look at her privileged life and who has her own motivations for hanging out with her. Josephine as an adult is not that different from Josephine as a teenager. She's contemptuous of her previous life, but also fascinated and eager to find out what happened to her former schoolmates.
    • 4/5
      This is a coming-of-age story like no other and it does not make my want to send my granddaughter to a private boarding school. The girls of St. John the Divine are cruel to one another. They are cruel elitists. Told by a graduate of the school, Josephine, it looks back on her time as a “Divine”. Now married and living in the US she had pushed the school to the back of her mind until her honeymoon when she and her husband stopped by to visit. Josephine has reason to regret her actions which she thought led to the death of her roommate. She’s haunted by them, and as she says “ I was a teenager, self-obsessed, too caught up in my own narrative to care about anyone but myself.” While all the characters, including the adults were unlikable, the audiobook made it impossible to put down. With great voice change and pace, Imogen Church has created a listening experience that will remain with me for a long time.
    • 4/5
      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.