This is a book in two parts and it's up to the reader to decide which one, if either, and maybe both, are the truth. I had the pleasure of attending an author chat with Katie Kitamura and it made me fall in love with this creative book

AUDITION is a one of.a kind novel. It offers no clear answers, but asks the best questions. I loved every second of this book probing the nature of art, performance, marriage, and self.

Audition is set up in two parts. In part one, we meet an unnamed narrator and a young man at a restaurant. He thinks she is his birth mom, but she explains that that isn't possible. In part two, the two characters are in fact mother and son. And from there, the reader is left to puzzle out what exactly is going on. There is not one interpretation of what happened, which makes for a great book club discussion. This is a novel that I will be thinking about for a long time.

Kitamura's concept is genuinely intriguing—two competing narratives about the same lunch meeting, each rewriting our understanding of who these characters are to each other. The actress-and-young-man dynamic crackles with ambiguity, and Kitamura excels at making every exchange feel loaded with subtext.
The dual narrative structure works brilliantly for most of the book. Just when you think you understand the relationship—mother/son? mentor/protégé? something more unsettling?—Kitamura pulls the rug out and recontextualizes everything. The prose is taut and hypnotic, perfectly calibrated to maintain uncertainty without frustrating the reader.
Kitamura captures the performative nature of identity with surgical precision. Both characters are constantly acting, even in private moments, which makes the "audition" metaphor feel organic rather than imposed. The Manhattan restaurant setting becomes almost claustrophobic as tensions mount.
Unfortunately, the ending doesn't stick the landing. After such careful ambiguity, the resolution feels both overly definitive and somehow unsatisfying. The final reveals answer questions you didn't necessarily need answered while leaving the more interesting mysteries unresolved.
Still, this is a fascinating experiment in narrative structure that mostly succeeds. Kitamura's technical skill is undeniable, even when the destination doesn't quite match the journey's promise.

This novel's prose is defined by three stylistic tics. First, the most grating but ultimately also the most harmless, is the redundant descriptor: “slow and languorous.” There's also “his natural charm, his charisma,” “breathless and ecstatic,” “complex and contradictory,” and “a shared delusion, a mutual construction,” among others. The second descriptor never complicates the first; at most, it adds a half-note of precision. The writer who reaches for two adjectives when one will do distrusts either herself or her reader.

Next, there’s the piling up of clauses separated by commas. Elsewhere in the book, as in Kitamura’s other recent novels, it shows up as an artful comma splice, in the manner of a text that’s been faithfully translated from French. This syntactic choice has a similar effect to the doubled descriptors. It is soporific.

Finally, there's the conceptual cliché. As this novel is nominally about the theater, its key images have to do with reflection, masks, doubling, faces. “I stared through…the frame of my own face.” The book thus ham-fistedly announces its themes. Its protagonist, an actress, glides around her world reflecting on the nature of language as a broken vessel for ambiguity. There are no sharp edges, concrete or otherwise.

The novel eventually confesses, rather anxiously, its own bad faith. “In the end it took very little for the whole thing to collapse…as if it had suddenly occurred to both of us that his lines were insufficient, my characterization lacking, the entire plotline faulty and implausible."

I have no idea what actually happened in this book, but you’re not supposed to, and I think I loved it. It opens with two people meeting for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. One is an accomplished actress, and the other is a young man, but we don’t know who they are to one another. Halfway through the book, there is an abrupt shift and two competing narratives unspool. This book challenges our understanding of the roles we play in our daily lives–partner, parent, creator–and the truths that performances mask, especially from those who think they know us best.

I went into this book expecting to not understand everything, and still, I was shocked by how my perception of what was happening and how the characters related to one another shifted constantly. This required some effort and made me feel off balance, but it was so engaging, and the beautiful writing propelled me along. This book has so many layers to peel back and examine, and you can spin theories all day long, but in the end, I loved how there wasn’t a “right answer.” It’s all up to the reader and how they want to interpret it.

“Here, it is possible to be two things at once. Not a splitting of personality or a psyche, but the natural imposition of my mind on top of another mind. In the space between them, a performance becomes possible. You observe yourself, you watch yourself act..”

This is not a novel that I enjoyed. It was work to read it and I had absolutely no idea what was going on. While I agree that we can be many different people with multiple roles in our lives, this novel was a step too far for me. Since I was reading it for book club , I persevered. The prose is lovely, but I think I need to create a new tag for this one…I’m just not sure what that would be. I had the feeling that the author was just f@&king with the reader and I HATE not having a real chance at understanding the author’s message, because ultimately it feels like a total waste of time or that I’m not smart enough to grasp the meaning.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Audition might be the most polarizing novel of the year (so far.) When I looked at my Goodreads to see what my friends had rated it, it was a lot of 2s, a handful of 4s, and a lot of 5s. Going in, I knew nothing, and I think that’s best. It’s disorienting at first, and Kitamura’s prose demands the reader slow down and take in every word. I’m so glad I did. At the sentence level alone, I loved this novel. The writing is *so good*. I don’t know how anyone can rate it two stars (I know we all have our reasons, but have y’all seen what people rate Freida McFadden?) I digress. There is very little plot here, but the details and characters are so rich, it almost feels like a mystery very slowly unfolding. I read it in a day, and I’m glad I did, as I know I noticed details that I might have missed if I didn’t devote myself to it (it’s less than 200 slim pages.) Near the end, I began to think I might be one of those people who rated it two stars simply because I didn’t understand what was (or wasn’t) happening, but in the end, Kitamura, unsurprisingly, nails it. I’m still pretty sure I didn’t fully get all she was doing, and it’s a book I’d probably appreciate even more on the second or third or fifth reading. It’s an absolute masterclass in storytelling, writing, and character.

Audition is a slim little mind bender that will leave you wondering not only what is happening in the protagonists life, but maybe what's happening in your own. Are we all just actors on a stage?

Audition by Katie Kitamura is a quietly unnerving exploration of performance, identity, and the emotional cost of reinvention, centered around a young woman navigating the treacherous waters of acting and self-worth. Kitamura’s prose is spare, hypnotic, and precise - each moment pregnant with ambiguity and desire. It’s a subtle psychological drama that lingers long after the final curtain.

Kitamura is like a brain surgeon when it comes to working on a readers expectation of story structure, culturally, specific ethics, and expansion of possibility, and she uses no magic or fantasy to do so. While I take a little bit of issue with the relationship dynamic and power dynamic, she has set up in the narrative it works, and it works for a lot of people even when it polarizes groups. Not my favorite of all of her works, but definitely accomplishes her tasks which include head, tilting left and right while reading And engaging deeply with one’s own biases.

A propulsive book whose mysterious keep you pushing forward until the end... but when you get there, is it satisfying? Audition is more interested in asking questions than answering them, which can be a bit frustrating at times, but it doesn't overstay its welcome.

This book is exquisitely written. It's so good that it can be read again to fully capture all of the building nuances. It's so well crafted. Excellent and highly recommended. The audiobook was phenomenal as well. This book deserves all the snaps and praise about the roles we play.

I've always been a Katie Kitamura fan and Audition is just another piece that solidifies that for me. After the abstract longing of Intimacies, I entered this with a hope for even more blank space between the concepts. What I love most about Katie's writing is she leaves room for the abstract and the interpretation. I've seen some reviews saying there's just not enough to work with in this novel. To me, that's what makes it stand out. Not everything has to be tied in a perfect bow to be interesting and intriguing fiction. The space gives us room to invent something ourselves, which most novels do not offer.

Gorgeous prose. Readers who enjoy Kitamura's style will like this one. It's less accessible and more experimental than A Separation and Intimacies, and I respect that it takes some big swings.

I totally get why this book is so divisive. You can always expect Katie Kitamura to make daring choices that push readers out of their comfort zone. The theatrical/performance themes were really interesting here, and as always, Kitamura's prose is dazzling.

There were quiet moments here where this book really dazzled, but it overall felt very unfinished, and there were too many loose ends left for the ending to feel satisfying.

One short novel, two alternative universes. This anxiety provoking (and bit confusing) novel will sure leave you with unanswered questions. Fans of noir novels will enjoy.

Katie Kitamura does it again. This book is broken into two parts that oppose each and make you question what is reality. The mysterious plot is written with such wit and dryness that you can’t help but be dragged to the next page. The main character seems to be invested a bit too much in her acting career, making you question what is work and what is real life. If you want a book that is extremely thought-provoking and leaves you wondering even after you have put the book down, then this is a book for you.

In spare language Kitamura examines the internal musings of an actress who informs of her marriage, her development of her acting career and her relationship with a young actor. As a reader we are slowly given glimpses into the protagonist's thoughts and feelings. Building tensions arise just
before there are illuminations. This is a virtuoso performance from an important author.