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!

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.