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

I have enjoyed every Katie Kitamura novel I have read but this one may be by far my favourite. As with her previous novel A Separation here too she invites the reader to unspool a narrative that is fundamentally about role-playing and the spaces between public and private performance written in her characteristic spare, taut prose. What I particularly loved about this novel is Kitamura's dexterity in building and heightening tension that helps build momentum and makes the novel utterly unputdownable.

I’m struggling to review this book without adding spoilers . I read it last month and have genuinely thought about it most days since.
Katie Kitamura has such a unique and beautiful style of writing, I’d read anything she writes. Her descriptions of people and the spaces they live in are like nothing else I’ve read. I had to reread the last forty pages , twice. I’ll reread the book when I buy a copy on publication but for now, I’d recommend this one and especially for a book club , it’s one to analyse and discuss at length .
A thought provoking read from an author at the top of her game.

Precisely crafted prose.

Cleverly structured. Perhaps too cleverly structured for me to quite grasp what is going on as the lines are blurred between reality and performance.

The opening is really engaging.and I was intensely invested in finding out whether Tomas would discover the truth regarding the relationship between the narrator and Xavier. And then... well .. everything is turned on its head and I lost the thread.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC.

I’m full of admiration and awe of the way Kitamura describes how people think and feel. It’s so precise and feels so right; I loved every sentence.
It’s not really clear to me what is exactly happening in this novel Are there two versions of a life being told? Is there a play being enacted? Is the narrator at all reliable? It doesn’t really matter though as it’s more about the almost hypnotic reading experience that draws you forward.
An absolutely brilliant novel about truth, subjectivity, identity, and role playing and highly recommended.
Thank you Penguin Random House UK and Netgalley UK for the ARC

The minute Audition was announced to be published, I was keen to read it. Already familiar with the authors previous works, I had high expectations for her upcoming novel. Kitamura's prose is nothing short of impeccable. The writing, while immensely smart, is free flowing, easy and enjoyable to read. The novel consist of two parts and two stories. How do these two parts connect? Are they even meant to be connected? The narrative is deliberately obscure and does not offer any clarity and takes the reader on a journey alongside the novels main protagonist. I absolutely loved it. The book ends on many questions and riddles to ponder. The characters stay with you and I can't wait to revisit this unique story and experience this authors performance all over again.

I was honestly mesmerised by this book. From the first page I was enthralled by the unravelling narrative following our unnamed female main character as an actor currently working on a play. I knew nothing about the plot going in and that is the way I would recommend experiencing this story. Kitamura's measured but precise usage of language explores the liminal lines between performance and life, the process of grief and trauma, and the relationship between experience and storytelling. The book is very subtle and distanced in the conclusions it draws, so be prepared for a book you're going to need to interrogate constantly to draw something from.

Audition is a captivating, thought-provoking book that explores the complex roles we play in our relationships, both with others and ourselves. Set in a Manhattan restaurant, the story follows a meeting between a mature, accomplished actress in rehearsals for her latest role and a younger, troubled man, whose connection to her remains ambiguous. Their interaction raises questions about identity, performance, and the roles people assume in relationships—partner, parent, creator, and muse.

The novel unfolds through two competing narratives, which gradually intertwine, challenging readers to reconsider the truths behind each character's persona. The narrative's structure itself mirrors the idea of performance, as the characters' outward appearances mask deeper layers of vulnerability and self-deception. Kitamura deftly explores how the stories we tell ourselves and others shape our understanding of who we are, especially when viewed through the eyes of those who think they know us best.

This book offers a fresh, compelling examination of human connections, full of nuance and subtle revelations, leaving readers questioning the nature of truth and identity.

Read more at The Secret Book Review.

This is such a hard book to review without giving anything away . It's a book of two halves , it starts in one place and when you think you know what is happening it changes to another completely different reality , very clever but also leaving you with A LOT of questions ! It's about art, performance, perception and relationships . A great book for discussion is all I can say .
I loved it , it won't be for everyone but if you enjoy books that are on the experimental side and enjoy very literary reads then this will be a hit !

Audition is a book I’ve been so keen to read so to be able to read it early (thank you NetGalley and the publishers for the early arc) i was very excited about it.

So going into this I knew me and Katie Kitamura have a mixed feelings relationship when it comes to their work, it’s been a bumpy ride. I would say I enjoyed this but didn’t end up fully loving the full product. It had shimmers and delights in the book that I was absolutely hooked on, but also parts of this that did not grab me and sadly didn’t catch me.

Butttt that’s not to take away from the book, yes I had a up and down relationship with it but ohh you cannot deny the writing and talent of Kitamura, the language she uses is just gorgeous, and the authors way with words is just a touch of brilliance.

I’m sure so many many people are going to enjoy and get along with this one! I’m sure it’s going to be a firm favourite in the book community too.

"There are always two stories taking place at once, the narrative inside the play and the narrative around it, and the boundary between the two is more porous than you might think, that is both the danger and the excitement of the performance."

Audition by Katie Kitamura is a brilliant novel, both in terms of the prose, which reminded me of Rachel Cusk at her best, and in its clever, and unsettling, construction.

"Xavier began to eat. As I watched him, the movement of his mouth as he chewed, his sinuous throat, I felt an unexpected charge between us. Although he was a stranger to me, in so many respects unfathomable, I knew the details of the fantasy he had created, the castle he had built in his mind, he had shared its private architecture with me and that disclosure was a form of intimacy."

The second half of the novel continues from the first, but with a crucial scene missing, and with one key shift that upends a key part of the previous narrative arc.

"There was no trace of the young man I had encountered only two weeks earlier, vibrating with uncertainty, he seemed to be a completely different person. As he held the door open for me, I saw that he was absorbed in, or had been absorbed by, the role of the assistant, that he was performing a part he had studied carefully, just as he had presumably studied the part of my long-estranged son. Like an actor moving on in the wake of a disastrous audition, shedding the skin of a role for which he had not been destined, and seeking out the next opportunity."

And then there is a final coda which upends the whole logic of the story and makes us question what we are reading, and if the whole thing is a staged performance.

"Inside, too much light, every lamp and fixture switched on, so that the interior appeared strangely flattened, without the depth of a normal room. The objects in the apartment looked suddenly insubstantial, almost like props, of the sort that appeared a perfect likeness but revealed themselves to be falsely constructed when you handled them, too light, or only partially composed. I leaned against the wall to steady myself, and discovered that it too seemed hollow, thin and rickety, as if it might collapse if I leaned with too much weight. The walls of my very own home, the apartment I had lived in for so long."

There are various 'theories' I've seen as to what is going on, but I don't think this is a novel that follows normal narrative logic, and I suspect if one asked Kitamura what she thinks happened she might reply as Josipovici did to me when I asked about his brilliant The Cemetery in Barnes, "If I knew that, I wouldn't have written the book."

Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.

Kitamura’s prose is taut and hypnotic, inviting us to question the nature of reality and the performances inherent in daily life. This elegantly crafted story is both thought-provoking and emotionally resonant. I will be tuning into her work.

Audition follows a woman who meets a man for lunch. He is young enough to be her son and her husband sees them together at the restaurant. The woman is an accomplished actress and has no children with her husband.

This was very well written and easy to read. There are some difficult topics in this but they are important. The story flowed well and I would recommend this for fans of Exhibit by R.O. Kwon. This feels like high concept literary fiction, it’s very clever and almost feels too high brow for me. There are some important conversations on being childless and I’m giving this 3 stars as I can’t say I ‘got’ this novel in its entirety. I would recommend this for fans who like literary fiction that doesn’t give many answers and leaves you thinking.

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!