The Divines

Set in the final days before a shocking tragedy leads to an elite boarding school shutting its doors forever, Ellie Eaton's The Divines is a razor-sharp debut that asks the question: were you really as good a person as you remember?

I am Divine. My mother was Divine and her mother before that, which isn't uncommon. Although that was at a time when being Divine meant something . . .

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 cutting in the way that only teenage girls can be. But for Josephine, now in her thirties, her time at St John feels like a lifetime ago. She hasn't spoken to another Divine in fifteen years, not since the day the school shuttered its doors in disgrace . . .

But an impromptu visit to her old stomping ground reawakens blurry recollections of those doomed final weeks that rocked the community. With each memory that resurfaces, she circles closer to the ugly 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.

With the emotional power of Normal People and the reflective haze of The Girls, The Divines is a compulsive debut exploring the intoxicating, destructive relationships between teenage girls.

'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'

Sarah Perry, bestselling author of The Essex Serpent