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Literary Fiction
Historical Fiction
Short Stories
Essays
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Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Biography/Memoir
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Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Biography/Memoir
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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.
Katie Kitamura's novels share an unadorned narrative style. Beautiful and spare, the writing can be deceptively straightforward, and there often comes a moment within her novels, an almost imperceptible twist, when readers suddenly realize that they have been subtly directed into mysterious, even murky, territory. It is hard to identify the stylistic technique, to figure out how a first-person perspective, conversationally relating a series of neutral-seeming events, can transmute into something so deeply enigmatic. In her newest novel, Audition, Kitamura commits yet another narrative sleight of hand, creating a scaffolding that results in a story more experimental and daring than in her previous books, and perhaps—certainly for those who can accept the challenges of a fluctuating narrative—even more satisfying to read.
Audition opens with an accomplished actress having lunch in a large New York restaurant with Xavier, a handsome young man. She feels uncomfortable with the glances that dart their way, and wonders if people might misconstrue their relationship. But what is their relationship? We learn that Xavier, a stranger to her, had approached her two weeks earlier at the theatre in which she is working on a new play and told her he believed that she might be his birth mother. At the time, she had informed him that this was impossible. Now, however, she reveals to the reader that the two do look quite similar and even share mannerisms. In the restaurant, she looks up and sees her husband unexpectedly appear. He does not seem to see her. She watches as he walks through and then turns and leaves the restaurant. Such oddly disconnected details begin to proliferate, making the scene, while clearly narrated, slightly disorienting to the reader. Who exactly is Xavier? Why does he believe that he is her son? Why is the actress meeting again with him if he is not? Why is her husband at the restaurant? Why does she panic when she sees him? What is not being said?
Kitamura has long explored ideas about language, performance, and identity. Her previous two novels, Intimacies and A Separation, also featured unnamed women protagonists, one a literary translator and the other an interpreter at the Hague. In both novels, the women find themselves in countries foreign to them and grapple with feelings of alienation and dislocation. These earlier novels also appear simple and straightforward in their writing style, but as the main character in Intimacies notes, "The appearance of simplicity is not the same thing as simplicity itself." Audition wrestles with a similar constellation of concerns.
The actress is deep into the process of preparing for a new theatrical production. It is a major role, and the play is divided into two very different parts. She is grappling with how to approach an important transitional scene that comes between the two acts: "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." And here is where Kitamura pulls the rug out from under the reader's feet. Like the two-act play that the actress is working on, the book's first act and second act are very different. But here in the novel, unlike in the play, there is no transition that brings the two bookends into harmony.
The second section of the novel opens with the same cast of characters, but the configuration has been changed, and relationships now contradict the information given in the first half. Here as well, the reader quickly recognizes that the first-person perspective is slowly transforming from straightforward to slightly strange to completely unhinged. The actress is the same person, and yet she is not the same. We begin to wonder how much of her narration, if any, is reliable. Who can be trusted? Which part of the book is telling the "truth"? The reader must put aside all expectation and follow Kitamura through an increasingly astounding narrative landscape. Eventually, a coda provides a possible breadcrumb for the reader struggling to find a clear path. We see that there may be new performance possibilities that we had not considered. This novel will challenge and delight readers willing to set aside their desire to be perpetually orientated. The payoff is a novel that dives deep into the question of whether any of us ever step off the stage.
Reviewed by Danielle McClellan
Hernan Diaz, author of Trust
Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds and Fates and Furies
The protagonist of Katie Kitamura's Audition is an actress, and sections of the novel reflect her thought process on performance, from the creation of her character to her considerations of a play's rhythms and structures. This plot device allows author Kitamura to contemplate themes that she and all novelists must also explore, such as character development and ways of viewing identity. It is no wonder that novelists so often utilize other types of performers as protagonists.
For readers interested in this kind of reflective conversation between the arts, here are a few novel suggestions that revolve around theatrical and film performance. In these novels, the protagonist's identity as a performer provides a circuit for the novelist to branch into themes that deepen their reflections on their own work as artists and as creators of characters.
Actress
by Anne Enright
The daughter of a legendary actress sets out to write her mother's biography. Among other aspects of the acting life, the novel explores the changing landscape of sexual exploitation in film industry, the crafting of character, the celebrity's rocky relationship with fans, and the strength that an actor can draw from her art.
Enter Ghost
by Isabella Hammad
A London-based actress visits her childhood home in Haifa and joins a West Bank production of Hamlet. This novel delves into the acting process and follows the actress as she creates her character.
Trust Exercise
by Susan Choi
Teenagers at a performing arts high school navigate play production under the eye of a charismatic and manipulative teacher. This plot takes several sharp turns as characters reveal themselves to be deeply unreliable, but ultimately the novel is about power and performance.
The Hypocrite
by Jo Hamya
A father watches a play by his daughter, a young playwright, and witnesses her refashioning of a traumatic period of her childhood that involves him. The author uses this performance to open a dialogue about how life's difficulties can be transformed into art, and what kinds of responsibilities the writer bears toward others.
Mona Acts Out
by Mischa Berlinski
Several weeks before taking on the role of Cleopatra, Mona spends Thanksgiving musing on the experiences which led up to and may or may not inform the role that she is about to play.
Other novels that center actors on stage and screen include Saving Hamlet by Molly Booth, All's Well by Mona Awad, Playworld by Adam Ross, and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.
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