Katie Kitamura’s latest novel, Audition, published in April and longlisted for the Booker Prize, delivers a sharp, precise exploration of ambition, desire and the unsettling spaces between them.
Kitamura’s spare, distant language grows increasingly taut as the novel progresses. She builds tension throughout the book as characters’ relationships become more fraught, examining the ways they perceive and manipulate each other. Something as simple as a family breakfast becomes a point of acrimonious conflict.
“Audition” begins elusively: The actress, who is never named, and a younger man, Xavier, are sitting together at a restaurant. The narrator does not initially specify their relationship; instead, she ponders the ways others could view them, an action that continues throughout the first half of the book. Although Xavier is “a stranger to” the actress, “in many ways unfathomable,” she is drawn, somehow, to “peer at the mystery of other people” and attempt to understand him.
We soon learn that Xavier, encouraged by a misleading profile of the actress from many years ago that said she “gave up” her baby, believes that she is his mother. He tracks the actress down at the theater where she is rehearsing for a new play. Even after the actress says that she is not his mother, Xavier remains a presence at the theater. After he is hired as the play director’s assistant, he invites the actress out to lunch, intending to tell her the news, which is the opening scene of the book.
Once Xavier begins working at the theater, his conversations with the actress force her to reflect on her life as a childless woman and an artist committed to her craft. Many years ago, she had a miscarriage. Xavier’s presence, a representation of what might have been had she had children, leads her to consider the miscarriage’s effects on her marriage.
While rehearsing for the show, the actress finds it challenging to interpret a scene. The playwright describes this scene as a bridge between the two halves of the show, the moment when her character undergoes a transformation.
After that rehearsal, the production jumps to the second half of the book. This section begins after the play for which the actress has been rehearsing has found success. Xavier is no longer a stand-in for the actress’s son: he is her son.
While the first half of the book focuses on the difficulties and impacts of the actress’s relationship with a man who claims to be her son, the second half explores the complications of parenting, observing characters as they change and mature.
This part of the book moves quickly, and it is more deeply resonant and vivid. As the well-drawn characters interact within the space of their own home, the reader learns more and more about what animates them. Kitamura’s language illuminates these chapters with bursts of expression, growing increasingly brilliant as the family’s conflict, spurred by Hana, Xavier’s cunning girlfriend, comes to a head.
Overall, “Audition” is a concise, unnerving and wise novel. Its greatest strengths are in its brisk plotting and in Kitamura’s careful, philosophical observations of characters and the nature of acting, which, profound and unexpected, linger with readers.
