Name: Audition
Rating: 3.112903225806452 (31 reviews)

Katie Kitamura

Audition

Amelia

It was that here, the gap between my private and performed selves collapsed, and for the briefest of moments there was only a single, unified self. Did this happen only in those few minutes on that stage and nowhere else? It felt that way. Although every beat of the scene was tightly scripted, I felt as if I had an infinite amount of time, I moved at my leisure. And while I hit my marks and cues, never deviating from the script, I was not in control of what took place, there was an alchemical process by which the scene unfolded, mysterious even to me and Max. In those moments,I was in communion with something, some force that was larger than myself and the scope of my ordinary life.

For so many years there had been the tacit understanding that I contained the threat to the marriage, that it was housed inside me. And for all those years I had tamped down every impulse to stray, I had lived inside a straitjacket of my own devising, and I had remained true. But in the end, he was the first to tire of the marriage, he was the first to look outside, to open the door and taste the fresh and free air. He was the first, and he was always bound to be the first, because of course I needed him, I needed Tomas, much more than he needed me, and this had always been the case, whether I was able to admit it or not. It was him, and it was always going to be him.

I stand on the stage. I look out into the audience, whichis full, the kind of house that Xavier must have dreamed of possibly from the very start. Xavier, whose ambition has the depth and power of my own. It is the kind of house I myself wanted in the early days of my career, when the au- dience and its recognition was all I seemed to seek. Always to be seen, in those days it was alnost an end in itselt, be- cause it was in being seen that I could say for certain that I existed, that my limbs were real as I touched them, that my being was intact as it peered out into the world. A stay against the turbulence within methat was, perhapS, purpose of all this. he

katie h.

They would talk about the terrible evening they had spent in my company. Perhaps they would even mock me a little, my auteur, my arrogance, I could see it already. I was holding the stem of my wine glass in my fingers, tapping the ball of it restlessly, and now I carefully knocked the glass so that a stain blossomed on the tablecloth and the others startled and pushed back their chairs.

What a Part II! Very different than I expected. Quick read, just happened to read Part I six months ago so it took a little reminder getting back into it… dreamy! Perfect book for November first

Eli Alvah Huckabee

I will never not love a book about acting. It will never not make me think of our sweet Beckett. But this was a spooky woman instead. I think he would've liked it. 

Jules 

happy halloween ... EASTER EGG

I will never not love a book about acting. It will never not make me think of our sweet Beckett. But this was a spooky woman instead. I think he would've liked it. 

kitamura has said that horror begins when you look at something you believe you know and it suddenly appears unrecognizable, and 

 is pretty... perversely faithful to that idea. the novel does not need to replace the familiar with anything visibly monstrous, either; it only adjusts the angle, such that a husband becomes a stranger without ceasing to be a husband, a son can enter a life as though he has always been waiting immediately outside it, a gesture remains identical while the meaning behind it changes, or perhaps the meaning was always unstable and the gesture was only good enough at concealing this. kitamura’s horror is frightening partly bc it’s not meant to be horror. it’s just. uncanny. bc the recognition never fully disappears. you can still see the person you knew inside the person who now frightens you, which means you cannot grant yourself the mercy of declaring one of them truly false.

and how i love reading about acting :( i love novels that understand it not as lying/performance/artifice but as a sustained act of perception: watching what another person gives you, deciding what it means, choosing what to return. an actor’s body is an instrument, yes, but it is also a theory about everyone else in the room. the narrator notices posture, timing, tone, the physical arrangement of people in space; she understands that what appears natural is usually the result of choices so practiced they have become invisible. once you know that identity can be assembled from gesture, rhythm, costume, memory, and repetition, what exactly separates a role from a life except… idk, sustained duration?

 is especially interested in answering that, to be fair. what it lacks is a glaring absence, and i can’t say i’m satisfied by this reading experience when 

 felt so fulfillingly hollow, paradoxical as that is, but i forgive it bc it offers answers and then recasts the production before you can become attached to any of them. i know the temptation is to ask for completion, for certainty on real-ness, and i’m not immune; the two-part structure is an open invitation to hold one half against the other like two transparencies and search for the image produced where they overlap. but the more interesting piece is that neither version feels merely hypothetical. the past obligingly rearranges itself around each one. memories acquire different meanings. casual details become evidence. it turns out reality is very easy to authenticate once everyone agrees which performance they are attending. 

it helps that kitamura’s eye for those details is as deadly as ever. she writes perception at such a fine grain that some descriptions felt hellbent on being invasive, even when they didn't always succeed on breaching, bc there is always one extra detail—the placement of a hand, a glance held slightly too long, someone else’s awareness of being watched—that turns an ordinary observation into something charged. her sentences are so composed that you begin to experience their composure as menacing, almost, for lack of a better word atm, and i adore the clinicality of the words she chooses even when they disrupt flow that might traditionally constitute beauty. there 

beauty to me in that oddness. here, in particular, every qualification seems to suggest that the narrator has revised the truth before allowing us to hear it, so every clean piece of syntax contains the faint pressure of something being kept under control. much like theatre acting, i suppose. 

 understands domesticity as a consensus that can become hostile. a home is safe partly because everyone inside it agrees on what the rooms are for and who belongs in them. alter that agreement and the furniture does not have to move by themselves for the apartment to become uncanny. hana’s introduction carries that particular charge, though i admit i found her introduction abrupt and confounding at first. i only warmed up to it after sitting on it, though now i can appreciate that she makes visible an arrangement of loyalties, roles, desires, and observations that the narrator by that point could no longer manage from the centre. does that make her a copout or a catalyst? idkkk 

and oh, tomas… i can never make up my mind about you. there was something about his desire for continuity, or perhaps my desire on his behalf, that made him feel especially textured, like a character embossed on a painting where everyone else is just brushstrokes on the canvas. he seemed caught inside the terrifying possibility that love can remain sincere even when the life containing it has become unrecognizable—that you can continue loving someone while no longer knowing which version of them you are addressing, or which version of yourself they believe they are answering. the later discomfort i felt with him does not cancel the tenderness, and i think this book is cruel enough to understand that affection does not protect us from fear. sometimes it creates the exact conditions under which fear becomes well and truly unbearable.

first novel in a long time to properly spook me, and it did so without ever giving me the relief of a single thing i could call the monster. love u, katie kitamura. 

i did say i was seated after intimacies (and still am) but this was... ooky spooky, yeorobun.

kitamura has said that horror begins when you look at something you believe you know and it suddenly appears unrecognizable, and audition is pretty... perversely faithful to that idea. the novel does not need to replace the familiar with anything visibly monstrous, either; it only adjusts the angle, such that a husband becomes a stranger without ceasing to be a husband, a son can enter a life as though he has always been waiting immediately outside it, a gesture remains identical while the meaning behind it changes, or perhaps the meaning was always unstable and the gesture was only good enough at concealing this. kitamura’s horror is frightening partly bc it’s not meant to be horror. it’s just. uncanny. bc the recognition never fully disappears. you can still see the person you knew inside the person who now frightens you, which means you cannot grant yourself the mercy of declaring one of them truly false.

and how i love reading about acting :( i love novels that understand it not as lying/performance/artifice but as a sustained act of perception: watching what another person gives you, deciding what it means, choosing what to return. an actor’s body is an instrument, yes, but it is also a theory about everyone else in the room. the narrator notices posture, timing, tone, the physical arrangement of people in space; she understands that what appears natural is usually the result of choices so practiced they have become invisible. once you know that identity can be assembled from gesture, rhythm, costume, memory, and repetition, what exactly separates a role from a life except… idk, sustained duration?

i don’t think audition is especially interested in answering that, to be fair. what it lacks is a glaring absence, and i can’t say i’m satisfied by this reading experience when intimacies felt so fulfillingly hollow, paradoxical as that is, but i forgive it bc it offers answers and then recasts the production before you can become attached to any of them. i know the temptation is to ask for completion, for certainty on real-ness, and i’m not immune; the two-part structure is an open invitation to hold one half against the other like two transparencies and search for the image produced where they overlap. but the more interesting piece is that neither version feels merely hypothetical. the past obligingly rearranges itself around each one. memories acquire different meanings. casual details become evidence. it turns out reality is very easy to authenticate once everyone agrees which performance they are attending. 

it helps that kitamura’s eye for those details is as deadly as ever. she writes perception at such a fine grain that some descriptions felt hellbent on being invasive, even when they didn't always succeed on breaching, bc there is always one extra detail—the placement of a hand, a glance held slightly too long, someone else’s awareness of being watched—that turns an ordinary observation into something charged. her sentences are so composed that you begin to experience their composure as menacing, almost, for lack of a better word atm, and i adore the clinicality of the words she chooses even when they disrupt flow that might traditionally constitute beauty. there is beauty to me in that oddness. here, in particular, every qualification seems to suggest that the narrator has revised the truth before allowing us to hear it, so every clean piece of syntax contains the faint pressure of something being kept under control. much like theatre acting, i suppose. 

i see the rosemary’s baby and hill house influences primarily in how audition understands domesticity as a consensus that can become hostile. a home is safe partly because everyone inside it agrees on what the rooms are for and who belongs in them. alter that agreement and the furniture does not have to move by themselves for the apartment to become uncanny. hana’s introduction carries that particular charge, though i admit i found her introduction abrupt and confounding at first. i only warmed up to it after sitting on it, though now i can appreciate that she makes visible an arrangement of loyalties, roles, desires, and observations that the narrator by that point could no longer manage from the centre. does that make her a copout or a catalyst? idkkk 

and oh, tomas… i can never make up my mind about you. there was something about his desire for continuity, or perhaps my desire on his behalf, that made him feel especially textured, like a character embossed on a painting where everyone else is just brushstrokes on the canvas. he seemed caught inside the terrifying possibility that love can remain sincere even when the life containing it has become unrecognizable—that you can continue loving someone while no longer knowing which version of them you are addressing, or which version of yourself they believe they are answering. the later discomfort i felt with him does not cancel the tenderness, and i think this book is cruel enough to understand that affection does not protect us from fear. sometimes it creates the exact conditions under which fear becomes well and truly unbearable.

first novel in a long time to properly spook me, and it did so without ever giving me the relief of a single thing i could call the monster. love u, katie kitamura. 

a welcome reminder that there’s so much life to dig into at any age and how little control we actually have over any of it.

The unreliable narrator made this read a gripping one but left feeling like the investment and tension I held as a reader did not pay off. While I get that the point and themes of the book are more meta about reality, aging, desire and goes beyond necessarily commiting to readers getting a fulfilling resolution, the narrative did not necessarily lead me towards a reflective headspace about the themes. Also wasn’t sure what the penultimate chapter about the whole confrontation amongst the 4 characters was necessarily supposed to symbolise, I think that would be what I leave this read wondering about. 

Xi Hui Teo

This book withholds its intentions entirely. Sharp, unsettling, and deliberately opaque.

Karmen 

Haven't read anything like it! Can picture a banger of a film adaptation.

A challenging, mysterious, singular work.

c0up

Haven't read anything like it! Can picture a banger of a film adaptation.

A challenging, mysterious, singular work.

A rare book where, once I finished it, I genuinely couldn't tell if it was brilliant and I'm a little dumb, or it's stupid and I'm still smart. 

Regan Martin

A tightly woven metafictional family drama about the performance, performer and the stage.

Kitamura is superb at micro-moments of tension and release. The violent thought that eases as someone steps over into another room. The feather-light touch that turns into an altercation-starting grip, and then a segueway into a calm conversational question. These moments, and the unreliable narrator, makes for a gripping read. I inhaled this in 2 days worth of subway rides. What a trip. 

Xiang

A tightly woven metafictional family drama about the performance, performer and the stage.

Kitamura is superb at micro-moments of tension and release. The violent thought that eases as someone steps over into another room. The feather-light touch that turns into an altercation-starting grip, and then a segueway into a calm conversational question. These moments, and the unreliable narrator, makes for a gripping read. I inhaled this in 2 days worth of subway rides. What a trip. 

a very interesting exploration on the artistic process and the roles we play within our lives. I enjoyed the confusing, ambiguous, and sometimes circular narrative. Unlike anything I’ve read before, which is a feat in and of itself. 

Mic Carter

went into this book with little understanding of the plot and left with little understanding of the plot. certainly not an indictment, as the writing was very well done, but i'm not sure it'll land in my top books of this year. which is funny because i usually don't mind ambiguity, in fact am generally a big fan, but perhaps this one just put a tad too much faith in me, the reader. 

tiff <3

Luna 🌙

This was so slippery and mundane with some gorgeous prose tucked in. How exhausting to be an actress like the protagonist, attuned to every minute movement questioning the meaning.

bro I love katie kitamura I could not stop reading this. queen of interiority & subtle prose 

l🌀

Sam Sontag

Ulla V.

Yiğit Ahmet Kurt

Ezgi Hatipoğlu

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR FINALIST FOR THE 2025 BOOKER PRIZE INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER “A tightly wound family drama that reads like a psychological thriller."—NPR “Bold, stark, genre-bending, Audition will haunt your dreams.”—The Boston Globe One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. An exhilarating, destabilizing Möbius strip of a novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love. Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young—young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day – partner, parent, creator, muse – and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately. Taut and hypnotic, Audition is Katie Kitamura at her virtuosic best.

Audition

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