A story laced with intrigue and completely open to interpretation.

We meet our narrator and straightaway we’re plunged into an awkward meeting with a much younger man, and here is where the interpretation starts - is he a lover? A family member? Or something else?

The narrative felt tense as we raced to uncover the relationship between these two characters.

As the story progresses it splits into a different theme, all the while keeping the air of mystery and intrigue.

This will be a polarising book; it was beautifully written and an abstract concept. But at times it was difficult to follow and it was tricky to get into for me.

Overall it was a clever piece of literary fiction but not one for me!

This novel starts in a restaurant where the unnamed protagonist meets a much younger man, as they are eating her husband enters several times.
This will be a marmite book , you'll either love it or hate it . I suspect I'd have loved it more if I hadn't read reviews first.
If you've found this review frustratingly enigmatic it will keep you hooked until the end.

Katie Kitamura’s previous (and fourth) novel “Intimacies” featured an interpreter in the International Criminal Court at the Hague, and I understand her third “In Separation” featured a literary translator.

And this her fifth novel, due to be published later in 2025, continues the idea of interpretation/translation but this time with a protagonist who is an actress interpreting a play or film script via her performances.

It has I would say though, when compared to “Intimacies” at least, a far more metafictional and experimental approach – in many ways dissembling and examining the whole idea of classical novels and storytelling.

In a 2024 Elle interview where she first discussed the finished but unpublished novel, Kitamura gave some ideas about the ideas and motivations behind the novel, particularly the ideas of role-playing and performance as lived out not just on stage but in one’s own life (particularly in a family context): “When you take away all of the role-playing, all of the performance, what is left? I don’t know if that’s your authentic self, or if it’s a profoundly raw, destabilized, possibly non-functioning self …………. “People often talk about the performative aspect of social media or self-presentation as if it’s inherently superficial. I actually think we find ourselves through performance. We find we exist in performance.”

The novel opens, in Kitamura’s pared back crafted prose, with the first party actress narrator – meeting a much younger man (Xavier) at a large restaurant in the City’s financial district.

But there is something off about the scene (and I use the word scene deliberately): their conversation is stilted and awkward and the dynamics complex and shifting; the narrator is thrown to realise that those at other tables (and possible the waiters) seem to think Xavier is some form of gigolo/escort – reminding her of a formative experience in her youth when the reverse happened at a dinner with her father; and then Tomas her husband unexpectedly (and inexplicably) appears in the restaurant only to exit in a hurry and then only to refuse for some time to acknowledge his presence there.

We learn later, that the lunch was to mutually clear the air after an awkward first encounter when Xavier (of the same ethnic background as the narrator, with a not dissimilar features and who even seems to consciously mimic one of her unconscious acting “tells”/tics) approaches her and says he thinks he may be her child given up for adoption, Xavier having read in an old interview that the narrator did “give up a child” (which in “fact” was a euphemism used by the interviewer when the narrator was trying to given a frank interview about an abortion in her early career).

From there and after some difficult interactions with Tomas, as well as with Xavier who gets a job as personal assistant to the play director Anne, and the narrator reflecting on a brief but impactful period between pregnancy and miscarriage (which made her realise she and Tomas had very different desires) and reflecting that “not having children was also something that took place .... it wasn’t a question of absence, a question of lack, it had its own presence in the world, it was its own event” we switch to the actual play.

Despite being by a brilliant young playwright the narrator has long admired (and note there is a lengthy detour into a story about a brilliant acting performance , and being directed by Anne, and despite both of them lauding the narrator’s interpretation of her role, the narrator is only too conscious that the production “The Opposite Shore” is still not coming together due to her ability to know how to play a crucial scene mid play where everything in the play and particularly her character should change (and that Anne and the increasingly present Xavier know it also), although she also believes that the playwright herself had not really worked the scene through and had conflicted motivations for writing it

And as the rehearsal for that scene starts the novel itself breaks.

Part II begins with something of a celebratory dinner with Tomas and Xavier – the play now in production and a big success, largely hinging on her successful interpretation of the initially challenging scene that linked the two halves of the play

Except it seems (in a rather nice meta-fictional twist) that there has been a similar scene played out (off-page) in the novel where not just the narrator’s character but her world has undergone transformation/alchemy/transition/metamorphosis

We are seemingly in a different reality – as she refers to Xavier (still working as a personal assistant to Anne) as he son and over dinner he asks his parents if he can come and live with them – and things then play out between the three family members as they recalibrate and evaluate their relationships and interactions, made even more complex when Xavier’s girlfriend joins him – the narrator becoming increasingly conscious that its almost as though the others are viewing reality differently to her as everything she had assumed about her, about her husband and son, and about their relationships seems destabilized and overturned (much like our own interpretation as we ourselves try to reconcile the two halves of the novel and work out what to think of the narrator).

I loved two things that the author said in the Elle interview – about the narrator (“I think she is an unreliable narrator because she’s someone for whom reality itself is unstable.”) and also about what might be going on in the narrative saying that there are “A couple of different interpretations that are maybe even mutually exclusive, but that are, I hope, coherent and true.” – and just as an example aht are we meant to make of a lengthy diversion in the first part into a story about an actor whose seemingly brilliant portrayal of a man in turmoil was actually no more than a person with incipient dementia trapped “inside the scene … seeing his life and .. career drift away“

Overall I thought this was an entertaining and brilliant novel – quick to read but long to ponder and definitely one to revisit, one which as well as deconstructing fiction questions what it means to take identity and a role within the “shared delusion {the] mutual construction” of a a family and what one does when that identity is suddenly questioned.

A frustrating, high-concept piece of writing. It was beautifully-written and I appreciate it was clever, but it was not my cup of tea.

I was unfamiliar with Kitamura’s work going into this, which was likely an error on my part. Had I known the author typically writes abstract, postmodern stories, I wouldn’t have mistook the premise for something I would enjoy.

In Audition, the narrator is an actress, currently in a play of two very different Acts, struggling to figure out how to play a transitional scene that bridges the two. In true meta fashion, the book itself also consists of two very different parts with Part 1 teasing an important scene, one we never get to see and is completely unmentioned in Part 2.

As noted above, the writing is quite beautiful, and the narrator provides us with with some interesting commentary on race in theatre, as well as on being a mother/childless. But this is one of those literary novels that forces you to ask many questions, yet the answers remain elusive after the final page.

I was contemplating giving it three stars for being quite clever, but the last fifty pages just went completely off the rails. Up until that point, I had felt I somewhat understood the novel structurally and thematically, even if I did not necessarily enjoy it, but then the narrative dissolved into what, in parts, read like random chaos.

In the end, I was left thinking that this is one of those books so abstract that I think you could say it means literally anything, "oh, this symbolises this" and "this is a metaphor for that", so very deep, but books like this exhaust and frustrate me. I don't personally think it's clever to make a mess and wait for others to see art in it.

Don't get me wrong, there are certainly readers for this book. In fact, it is every Literature student’s wet dream— abstract, subjective, meta, and rooted in the heart of western literature: theatre.

Hence why I wasn't a Lit student.

I’ll also be glad when this trend of not using speech marks is over. I don’t know which hipster made this the “literary” thing, but it’s trite at this point. Even the other book I am currently reading is the same (Old Soul).

This was an intriguing book and I felt really invested as a drama teacher. The narration was intriguing and always kept me second guessing. A short, sharp novella that really intrigued and made me question the artistry of acting

I read Katie Kitamura’s book 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘴 and liked it, so there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to read her new book when I came across it.

It started off incredibly intriguing, with a beautifully told story filled with mystery and tension that immediately drew me in. The narrative delves into relationships, marriage, infidelity, hurt, guilt, loneliness, silence, and the emotional distance that can erode a marriage.

As the story progressed, parenthood came into focus, and things began to take a stranger turn. The sense of mystery lingered throughout—you find yourself with more questions than answers, which keeps you engaged, eager to piece everything together and understand how it all connects. At one point, it feels as though the narrative shifts unexpectedly, leaving you thinking about entirely different storylines.

However, by the end, you begin to see how the author skillfully ties everything together, and you realise how cleverly the story was constructed. It was interesting, unusual, and different—a book that leaves you thinking long after you’ve finished it, “𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦?”. And you realize that all the possible endings might be true, and there may be no definitive right or wrong.

Many thanks to Random House UK, Vintage for the review copy provided via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

In Katie Kitamura's "Audition," she explores the notion of identity and the roles we play in our lives. An actress struggles to find the right beats in a play while manoeuvring through concerns in her marriage and a pesky young man's attempt to insinuate him into her life. She can not have a son, but this man Xavier makes a startling claim that will upend the actress's stable existence.

As an actress, our narrator must not only play a part on stage, but also in her marriage, her interactions with the cast, and ultimately with the readers. Kitamura upends our expectations because we have to piece together what is happening in the story, I'm not ultimately convinced that it matters that we make ever piece of the narrative puzzle fit. We just need to create our own version of the story--how the protagonist "auditions" and "acts" her way through the narrative of her life and the tale she is telling the readers.

It's a fascinating reading experience because we don't know if the actress narrator is reliable. Is she playing the part of a reliable narrator? Is she actually a reliable narrator? Is she playing the role of a loving but somewhat unsatisfied wife? What's lurking underneath her dissatisfaction? In a way, Kitamura (through the narrator) gives the reader just enough subtext that we must create the characters out of the information she provides. We stage manage the play that Kitamura has offered up to us. This is another stunner from Katie Kitamura.

Audition is an excellent novel, unique and poignant in so many ways. Kitamura weaves two parallel narratives, following the same primary characters along two timeliness differing in one crucial way, demonstrating how the seemingly smallest of things help shape our lives and the relationships we form.

Our protagonist is cold and deeply flawed, in both narratives, and Kitamura does an exceptional job of making you believe that she is believable as the same person in these two wildly different lives she is living. I truly believe Kitamura hit the nail on the head and this novel begs a lot of deep reflection on life, family and marriage.

On top of all this, there's a really heavy focus on acting as a career, or lifestyle really, and all the nuances of life that are different for those following this path. Even as someone who isn't particularly interested in acting as a profession, I enjoyed this immensely.

3.5

This is my second book by Katie Kitamura and although I didn’t love the first one I read, I find her writing fascinating.

Audition starts with our narrator, a stage actress, meeting a young man called Xavier in a busy restaurant. We do not know the nature of their relationship. Are they mother and son? Lovers?

The book is split into two parts. I found the first half really strong and it had me gripped. I wanted to know more about Xavier and our narrators relationship. I also enjoyed learning about her relationship with her husband, Tomas too. Then when it flipped to part II, I was so puzzled and wondered if there were things I had missed. With our narrator being incredibly unreliable, it was hard to work out what was actually real. We don’t learn what is and isn’t.

I enjoyed the premise and the tense writing style throughout. It was such a unique reading experience. I came away not really knowing what to think of it all but I have since read a couple of theories that would make sense. I’ve given this a 3.5 mainly because I found things difficult to keep track of towards the end however, I still enjoyed it and would recommend it.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an early eARC. We are being so spoiled with these 2025 releases!

A beautiful, thought provoking meditation on the life of an actor and the dynamics of what motherhood can mean. Jam-packed with delicious prose, this novel straddles postmodernism and the absurd and the meaning of intimacy in our relationships. It’s brutal, tender and raw. Another smash-hit for Katie Kitamura.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

Highly enjoyable - I liked the two halves kind of style. Not entirely sure which half was the real story or if neither were - left me confused but in an excellent way.

Audition by Katie Kitamura is a playful and inventive novel about identity. Compelling and thought-provoking.

Katie Kitamura's third novel once again defies easy interpretation. Audition opens in a restaurant, where an older woman dines with a young man. She's a well-known actress rehearsing for her next play; he could almost be her son—but that would be impossible. Or would it?

The unnamed actress is struggling to fully inhabit her new character, unable to bridge the gap between her "private and performed selves." As she develops a closer relationship with the young man, Xavier, her life begins to change. She gradually loses her grip on her workplace, household, and marriage, her position of authority up in the air.

This shift from security to instability is mirrored in the novel’s structure, as the story suddenly splits into two competing narratives. Everything we take for granted in Part I is called into question in the second act, as the lines between reality and performance blur. What is fact and what is fiction? Who is the creator and who is the muse? And what happens when the contract is broken — that “careful collusion that is a story” — and the characters stop playing their parts? Like the audience of a play, we are invited to find our own answers.

In her first two novels, A Separation and Intimacies, Kitamura’s protagonists are a translator and an interpreter respectively. In Audition, the writer examines how language is used in theatre to perform versions of reality—a reality that is itself unstable. As in life, there is no single, neat interpretation.

While the narrator states that the perfect observer knows how to sit with narrative ambiguity and “simply let it be”, this level of uncertainty is not for everyone. If you prefer an author to guide you to a neat resolution, *Audition* might leave you with too many unanswered questions, but I’d highly recommend it for fans of experimental, literary fiction. With its taut prose, tense atmosphere and slippery narrative, it’s a thought-provoking and original read.

With thanks to Net Galley for the advance reading copy.

Told in two acts, Katie Kitamura’s AUDITION is a strange, short novel, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot since I read it. In the first half, a woman and a young man meet for lunch, and their relationship unfolds carefully, revealing the multiple roles each of them play. In the second half, a different reality takes place, shifting perspectives on the characters. I read the second half much faster than the first, and it feels much more unsettling than the first half, which is interesting given that it’s perhaps the more “stable” of the two setups. It’s very clever, almost like a play in itself, looking at performativity and role-playing in a way that feels original.

This was a very strange book which, if it wasn’t for its short length, I don’t think I would have finished.

I’ve come away with the feeling that I’m somehow not intelligent enough to have understood what the author was trying to do. For me, simply, the book felt incoherent. Perhaps I prefer too conventional a plot or more traditional story telling.

I could deal with the shift in relationships between parts one and two, it was interesting and I was keen to see where it went - though I was getting into the story of part one and think I would have liked to spend more time there than the bizarre elements of part 2.

Part 2 was just plain weird and, while I got sense of what had maybe happened, I’m not someone who enjoys a lack of clarity in my books and the changing, ever more confusing relationships left me feeling bewildered.

Sadly it won’t be one I’ll be recommending.

This is a dizzying, disturbing piece of writing that is theoretically informed but which also is self-referential enough to be able to stand alone. It deliberately destructs a linear storyline with two parts - or acts? - that pull in different directions in terms of narrative logic but which cohere in abstract and thematic ways.

Kitamura's previous books have featured an interpreter and a simultaneous translator: here we have an actress so that the text draws together issues of performativity with language - and it's this interrogation of language itself as a medium for performance and, hence, identity that places this book in what might even be figured as a loose trilogy with the previous [book:Intimacies|55918474] and [book:A Separation|30407998].

In this book, the narrator is an actress struggling to find a way to bridge two prime scenes in a play and failing to make the characterisation switch. In a meta twist, this book we're reading is also about a break that divides unified representation into two disjunctions.

In an important conversation, the narrator thinks about how a crucial piece of identity formation - in this case motherhood - is not merely an absence of children, but an act in and of itself: a presence, if you will. And, later, as the narrative dislocates, there is an absence of a critical conversation that is about to take place but which turns out to also be an act or event on which the second half of the story hinges.

I can imagine this book being frustrating to readers who want a logical exposition and nineteenth century realism: instead this plays in that postmodern space of subjectivity and relativity, where all self is a series of performances and there is no such thing as 'authenticity'. Using the framework of theatre works especially well to thematise social collusion and complicity as performance on a grand, mutual scale, and I was also reminded of western theatre's dramatic origins in the festival of Dionysus: the god of theatre as well as ecstasy and divine madness. There is definitely something frenzied about the second part with, perhaps, some kind of catharsis by the end.

In any case, this is a riveting, hallucinogenic read that starts in one place and goes somewhere unexpected and extraordinary. One to read and put back onto the pile to read again.

Loved this book - Katie Kitamura is a generational talent. This was my favorite of hers so far. Well done!! Thank you NetGalley for the ARC

This is a short novel, coming in at just over 200 pages but this really packs an emotional punch.

Very enjoyable and a book you can read in just an afternoon

What a weird little book. I really enjoyed the beautiful writing and the narrative was so compelling, if not confusing. As I read further into the book, it felt claustrophobic and unsettling as it becomes less and less clear what is real and what is not. A masterclass in unreliable narration, I really enjoyed this book.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC!

This book is totally unique and intriguing, although a bit confusing and hard to follow at times it is beautifully written and paced. Overall, I liked the story and I enjoyed reading something quite deep and difficult to figure out. You do really have to think about the conversation between the two characters and appreciate what the author is doing with this book.