I really enjoyed the atmosphere of this book and found it very thought provoking. However, like some other viewers, I also found it a bit disorientating at times (perhaps this was intentional) and after leaving it a few days between reading and writing my review, I have noticed little of the narrative has stuck in my mind. I really enjoyed the division of the narrative into two parts, exploring two different possibilities and their connected versions of performance, yet the narrator in both remained slightly aloof for me and I struggled to completely empathise with her (again, perhaps this was intentional…) Overall, an enjoyable read but one that left me wanting a little bit more.

Atmospheric but a bit too detached

Katie Kitamura’s The Audition is a tense, minimalist look at identity and performance. The sparse prose and eerie tone work well, but the emotional distance made it hard to fully connect with the narrator. Thought-provoking, but feels more like a sketch than a finished story.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC

This was such a great read, so much nuance and makes the reader consider all the options. Written in a very clear way, but the undertone is deeper. Touches so many different topics, such as motherhood, parenthood, womanhood..an elegant book! One of my best reads of the year!

I read it, I enjoyed it, although got a bit frustrated at times. The thing is, after leaving it for a while and coming back to review it, I can't really remember much about it! A good writer, and I will read more of her works in the future.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

Katie Kitamura deliberately designed her novel to resist a fixed interpretation. She presents two overlapping but ultimately clashing narratives, leaving it up to her readers to decide how each relates to the other. Throughout she privileges the perspective of an unnamed narrator, a 49-year-old, Asian-American actor whose career’s finally taking off, after years of being relegated to bit parts and stereotypical characters. She attributes an element of this belated success to shifts in the surrounding culture – what once rendered her marginal now seems to add to her potential value. On the surface the narrator’s existence is enviable, she’s the star of a major theatrical production and in her downtime lives with her equally successful husband in an elegant West Village apartment. And yet there’s a distinct impression that all of this is precarious that the narrator’s life is being shaped by external forces, as with her theatrical performances, her lines are not entirely her own. And agency, or rather lack of agency, is a central theme here. Gender, and associated roles such wife and/or mother, is a key constraint. This is brought to the fore by the narrator’s encounters with a younger man Javier who’s in his twenties – his name may or may not be an allusion to the influence of Javier Marias on Kitamura’s work.

Kitamura’s story undergoes a momentous shift as the first half gives way to the second – although there are various clues to what later takes place scattered throughout earlier episodes. The narrator’s mannered, oddly formal tone becomes increasingly frantic almost disjointed. Kitamura wanted aspects of her novel to resemble a David Lynch film – for me Mulholland Drive was the one that came to mind - although Kitamura’s surreal flourishes are far more muted, far less flamboyant than Lynch’s. Kitamura also consciously draws on a certain style of horror associated with Rosemary’s Baby and writers like Shirley Jackson. Kitamura’s intent on replicating a form of atmospheric unease, an intensifying queasiness. Some of the scenes that take place in the narrator’s apartment conjure a claustrophobia, a simmering uncertainty akin to that experienced by Rosemary before she uncovers the nature of her neighbours’ conspiracy. Like Rosemary in those early stages, the narrator’s assumptions about her reality are challenged by near-uncanny events, undermining once taken-for-granted knowledge: both of self and of others, particularly her husband Tomas. Some of this is achieved through the introduction of Hana a disturbing figure who also sparked, rightly or not, questions about the function of mirroring in Kitamura’s piece.

Kitamura’s clearly drawing on her background in literary and cultural studies here: the emphasis on cultural scripts; rituals of everyday life; on performance and the presentation of the self; the questioning of notions of authenticity. She also appears to be constructing a commentary on the nature of fiction writing - the novel’s scope, the potential of realism colliding with artifice. Kitamura’s decision to focus on theatrical performance was an effective means of highlighting a number of her preoccupations. Unlike film or TV, theatre is partly defined by its immediacy, its mutability. It’s never entirely fixed in time; no performance faithfully reproduces the last. Even minute variations in performing a part can alter its reception and interpretation and yet the script always delimits possibilities. I didn’t find the ideas Kitamura’s exploring especially startling but I admired her creative decisions, her deft approach to her subject matter. Her plot is fairly minimal yet there were times when I found the tension, the creeping disorientation gripping, almost excruciating. Overall, not desperately groundbreaking, but ambitious and intelligent enough to make for satisfying reading.

Wow, this was very difficult to get my head around. The first half is OK - a bit confusing as the MC meets a young man who claims to be her son. Then, part two just flips everything on its head.

I'm so pleased we discussed this as part of a book group on Litsy, reading everyone else's opinions and thoughts really helped me to understand the book more, and even to appreciate it. (Just a little bit! 😂)

2.5 stars rounded up to 3

A mysterious plot, and nuanced characters, make this enigmatic work an enjoyable read. It didn't change my world or alter my brain chemistry. However, It did keep me enthralled as I read. If you enjoy realistic fiction that has a twist, then you will love this book

I usually enjoy metafiction (looking at you, Atonement), but this one didn’t quite land. The narrative was so abstract that it felt like I was hallucinating- nothing really stuck, and I struggled to find meaning in it. The only thing I’m sure I’ll remember is that strange, disorienting feeling. It’s definitely the kind of book I’d need to reread to even begin to grasp, but I’m not sure I want to.

Easily one of the best books I've read this year - i was completely mesmerised by the writing and am still trying to untangle the relationships between the characters and what the author is trying to say about the roles we perform.

An interesting book exploring different relationships between the characters. Overall, it was fine, but not one that completely kept my attention throughout.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

Listen, I like novels that are experimental and meta, but - unpopular opinion! - the new Kitamura just doesn't have enough meat on the bone. Sure, all the world's a stage (As You Like It; later sociologically investigated in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life), but that this novel in two parts that lets its protagonists change roles asks, as the description of the book suggests, who we are to the people we love seems like an empty promise to me. In both parts, our narrator and protagonist is an actress with a curious tendency to treat life as literature, meaning that she ascribes meaning to every word, every object, every movement, every sound as if an artists put it there after carefully thinking about it - which drives her crazy.

In the first part, a young man contacts her because he believes her to be his mother, which isn't the case - in the second part, she IS his mother. In the first part, she cheats on her husband - in the second part, you guessed it, he cheats on her. In the first part, she struggles with a theater scene - in the second part, she mastered it, and so on. Constantly, she is performing her professional and social roles, responding to the outside world as if it consists of props and prompts, and the effect is truly unnerving and claustrophobic. This is juxtaposed by a playwright she meets, one who, as she slowly comes to understand, has no idea what she has written: The play of our life is a contingent mess, there is no coherence or pre-defined meaning.

Who are we if we have no screenplay, but masks? Sure, that's an interesting question per se, but to me, Kitamura's plot, especially the last chamber play section so reminiscent of The God of Carnage, left me cold: Nothing much happens, except vibes and an actress acting all the way through her existence. It didn't captivate me, and I mainly pulled through because Kitamura's language and scene composition are of course first class.

Thanks to NetGalley and Katie Kitamura for this review copy!

So I am a sucker for a postmodern read but this one seemed to take so many liberties with its story that I just couldn’t connect with it very much. It’s a great example of a well executed piece of experimental literature, but this wasn’t my kind of pretentious meta narrative for some reason. I can’t explain why because usually this kind of pushing of literary limits is right up my alley, but something just stopped me from connecting with it properly.

I read this over the course of a day and thought it was beautifully written. The novel, like a play, is set out in two parts and examines the relationship between our older unreliable female narrator and a younger man. The reader does not initially know the relationship between the two and is left guessing throughout. Even by the end I was confused, maybe that was the point… to draw your own conclusions.
I preferred Intimacies by this author but will definitely read anything she writes, as I do find her writing really impressive,

I picked this up after seeing a really interesting mix of early reviews here on Goodreads, knowing that that I would most like fall on an extreme level of like or dislike. Sadly, this wasn’t for me.

The writing was beautiful, but it wasn’t clicking and I was struggled to care for the characters or what was happening in the timelines so I ended up DNFing ‘Audition’.

Thank you to NetGalley and Vintage for the review copy.

This was a real meh for me, sorry. Honestly the first book of hers that just really did nothing for me (it could very well be though that I am officially stupider after having a child). Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

What a trip! Very boring to say but this is a book that works better if you go in with as little knowledge as possible. But on a basic level it is about a successful actress, her husband and a younger man. Their relationship to this young man? Who can say.

This is told in two parts and a few pages into the second part I was like ‘…huh?’ And I went back and re-read to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. I hadn’t! The writing is so tight and sharp, not a word feels wasted.

I cannot think of a better book club book, it will spark conversations and theories and many many thoughts. I had a really great reading experience and would thoroughly recommend, if only so I can selfishly have more people to talk to about it!

It’s not you it’s me. I might try this again on audiobook when it's released! The ARC formatting made it difficult to follow.

'Audition' is a strange, spare novel exploring motherhood, identity and performance. The novel begins with the unnamed narrator, an acclaimed actress, meeting a young man, Xavier, for lunch in Manhattan. We soon learn that the young man believes he is her son, but this is due to a misunderstanding as the narrator has never had a child. Another man enters the restaurant - Tomas, the narrator's husband - which complicates matters further.

From this opening, the narrator and Xavier's lives become further entangled, which also affects her marriage with Tomas. I found this a surprising and intriguing but highly compelling read which asks searching questions about who we are, how we know and the extent to which life is a performance, as different narratives exist alongside each other,

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

Adored this. Tense, claustrophobic novel about the performance of our lives, the essential unknowability of our selves and others, things fall apart the centre cannot hold etc. I read it all in one breathless sitting and immediately wanted to discuss it with everyone I know. Cannot recommend enough going in with zero idea of what this book is about!

Audition
By Katie Kitamura

When I noticed that the publisher refers to this novel as a Mobius strip I knew this wasn't going to be a straightforward narrative but I had no idea how perfectly this describes it until the very end.

I'm dizzy, I feel like I have been holding my breath for the entire second part. Several times I worried I was losing the thread, but when a high concept piece of writing which on the surface, seems imbued with surrealism, matches so closely to personal lived experience, the result can be breathtaking exposure.

The actor as woman, the skill of performing whichever iteration of woman is required in that moment, the fluidity of being able to adapt and balance outside forces and the will and expectations of others against the inner force of being, the fluidity of identity.

Who am I when I am not just me as a single person, when my partnership is under scrutiny from within or without? Who am I when my choices around parenthood are being examined? Who am I when my motherhood challenges my partner or my partnership challenges my offspring? Who am I when my partner and my offspring appear in cahoots to challenge me?

I see acknowledgement of the difficulties around raising a man while fending off the default position of chauvinism. Also the normalisation of behaviour by conspiracy.

What is a family anyway " if not a shared delusion, a mutual construction" where we "participate in the careful collusion that is a story, that is a family, told by one person to another person".


All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players....

Stunning.

Publication Date: 17th April 2025
Thanks to #Netgalley and #randomhouseuk for providing an ARC for review purposes