Audition by Katie Kitamura

“Tension grew out of every scene, scenes in which nothing took place people said very little, and yet the pressure grew and grew so that by the end of the play I realized I had been in a sickening state of unease for some time.”

This quote really sums up the experience of reading this book.

I can tell you right now that I’m still thinking about this book and formulating my thoughts. I would really like to read this with a book club to have other peoples perspectives and insights.

All I knew about this story going in is that a woman and a man are at a restaurant. The man looks much younger. Who are they? Lovers? Mentor and mentee? Mother and son?

This book has a really unique method of storytelling. It is told in two distinct parts.

I’ll mostly talk about the first part so that you can really experience this book should you choose to read it. The first part starts with these two characters at lunch. We are in the woman’s perspective and it almost feels like she is on a call with us the reader telling us about this event. It feels very stream of consciousness while also feeling slightly unsettling. There are no quotation marks with the dialogue, which personally, I loved. It really felt like I was on the phone with her or talking to a real person. When we speak we tend to add things to the conversation like “and she said…” or “and then I went…” this was similar. But what this tool did was trap us with her point of view only. She would sometimes observe peoples body language in response to something she had said but then begin talking about something else cutting off that other persons side of the conversation short.

We carry along in the story while our main character grapples with who this man is. We see some insight into her life and we get what feels like a very definitive answer as to what the relationship is between her and this random man.

…Until part 2.

Part two begins with a very different tone. Something is missing but what? Is this the same story? Is something up with the characters?

I loved this! Just a few pages into part 2 and I was hollering! A huge shift like that had my mind racing trying to figure out what was going on and why there was such a stark difference.

I think you will get the most out of this book if you just jump right in and then discuss with others if you’re able to afterwards. As well as looking up interviews with the author.

This is a story that I could see my view of it changing as I get older. You know those stories? You read something and you LOVED it, years go by and you reread and you still love it but it hits different. It hits your heart in ways you didn’t think it could because you hadn’t experienced that part of life yet. That’s how I felt when reading this.

I really enjoyed Audition and I look forward to reading more from this author.