Audition by Katie Kitamura

I first learnt about Katie Kitamura via her novel Intimacies, which I think Kindle promoted to me on a £0.99 offer. It was a good use of my hard-earned cash becuase it made a huge impression on me, and was one of my top reads in 2024.

So when I learnt that Kitamura's new book had been shortlisted for the Booker prize, I was keen to dip in. It's the story of a financially comfortable couple living in New York. She's an actress, he's a writer and through her point of view, we learn about the ups and downs of their relationship.

There are two parts to the book. In the first part, the couple are child-free. A stranger, Xavier, with his youthful good looks, tells the actress he is her son. Is he mistaken, a con artist or indeed her long lost son? Trying to answer this question is partly what propels this novel forward.

At one point, the actress and Xavier discuss the issue of having children, and the actress thinks:

People always talked about having children as an event, as a thing that took place, they forgot that not having children was also something that took place, that is to say it wasn’t a question of absence, a question of lack, it had its own presence in the world, it was its own event.

In the second part, the actress has a son who is a stranger to her. In either case, he asks things of her she's not always able to provide.

Part one was infinitely more interesting to me. I liked the drama of the couple's relationship, their love, contradictions and ambivalence. Adding a third character into the mix seems to complicate a beautiful thing. It is both awful and wonderful, but surplus to requirement. I would have been happy learning about how they came to be who they are. But that is a completely different novel, and perhaps not as complex and layered as the one Kitamura has written.

I understood the woman in the first part of the book. But the woman in the second was utterly befuddling to me. Why? I kept asking myself for at least half of the second part. And I still don't have an answer to this. I just don't get it, but maybe parents will?

Regardless, Audition is beautifully written. It's propulsive and engaging.

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