I Love a Book That Makes Me Think

A short discussion of "Audition" by Katie Kitamura

This was written and has been sitting in my drafts since April. I decided to say “f it” and hit send. Enjoy, and let me know what you think. If you’d like more in-depth book chats, please lmk!

If you’re at all attuned to the literary book world, you’ve most likely stumbled upon heaps of praise for Katie Kitamura’s latest novel, Audition. I loved it so much I read it twice (and still think about it), so I wanted to share my own take.

Audition begins with an unnamed narrator, an actress in her midlife. She’s meeting someone at a restaurant in New York’s Financial District, and she’s nervous. She feels ambivalent about this meeting and is ready to turn right back around, but she doesn’t.

Turns out the person she’s meeting is a young man named Xavier, a college student who is about half her age. He’s incredibly handsome, striking, and drips charisma with which he doesn’t know what to do (to the narrator’s great frustration). Oh, and he tells her that he’s her son. The novel unfurls from there. What exactly is the true relationship between this actress and this young man?

Where I imagine that opening scene to take place: Crown Shy in FiDi.

The structure of Audition leaves it up to us as the reader to decide. It’s split into two parts: In part one, the two are complete strangers, while in part two, a significant shift happens (no spoilers here, so I won’t elaborate on what exactly), and we’re left wondering what, exactly, part one was even about?! Is the narrator out of her mind? Is this a joke? Will there be a big reveal? Is any of this real?

***

My short review: Overall, I really enjoyed the book. It’s a short novel, just under 200 pages, but it packs a punch. The writing style immediately draws the reader in: a stream-of-consciousness style that evokes a bit of chaos, overanalyzing, uncertainty, and above all, intimacy within a particular moment. It feels very real.

What I love most about this book is that I know opinions and interpretations will vary among readers. That’s the beauty of this work! It’s one that will spark discussion. Some readers will hate the uncertainty of the book, while others, like me, will love that it keeps you guessing and encourages examining the work from all angles.

“I thought about ‘Performance’ as a title, but I think, to some extent, ‘Audition’ felt like it was more contingent. The characters are trying on different arrangements, auditioning for different relationships with each other.”

—Katie Kitamura, in an interview with The New Yorker

In Audition, the characters are indeed striving and trying for the sake of approval from others, whether it’s between the narrator and her husband, the narrator and Xavier, or her husband and a third party that enters their bubble (no spoilers, but I want to talk about Hannah!). As a reader, this makes for an intimate reading experience. We’re inside the unreliable narrator’s head, however frustrating it may be. I found that at one moment, I’d root for the narrator, while in other moments, I wanted to shake her just a bit.

Overall, I like the fluidity of this concept of performance; that we’re always donning different masks to meet the moment as our contexts and lives change and shift. An audition implies that there’s an air of being judged; you pass the audition or you do not. There are stakes involved.¹ You fake it ‘til you make it. The tension created between characters through this insistent mental juggling and reconfiguration felt so real in Audition. I was at once appalled by the narrator’s over-self-awareness (and sometimes lack of it) and identified closely with it.

(Katie Kitamura photographed by Heather Sten for The New Yorker.)

***

[Warning: There are some mild spoilers below, but I don’t think they’ll take away from the experience of reading this book.]

This won’t be the case for many readers of this book, but the themes of motherhood and parenting stood out to me the most in Audition. As I’m currently in the thick of motherhood, this is no surprise. What does it mean to be a good parent to a child? How does our perception of our own parenting and nurturing differ from how others perceive it, especially our children? Is parenthood just a performance?

I became curious and jotted down a few notes from past interviews about how Kitamura views the themes of Audition (including motherhood) and what she aimed to convey. What I found was deeply resonant…

“There’s something very interesting about being a parent, because suddenly there is another person in the world who is telling you who you are to them. And that is, in a lot of ways, the most important identity that you have, but it is somehow othered. I know very much that the person my children think I am is not the person I always feel myself to be – that crack in being, or experience, is something I wanted to explore.”

“Sometimes I feel like a teacher or a writer or a friend or a daughter or a wife or a mother, and there’s something that does feel a bit incommensurate about those parts,” she says.

—Katie Kitamura in an interview with The Guardian

I don’t have much to add to this besides: yes, yes, and YES. As I sit here and write this, I am loving my job as a writer, editor, and curator. I could get lost in this mode, this flow, this moment forever. And I feel a deep longing to run right back to daycare, pick up my daughter, and take her to the park to play. We contain so many fractured identities that it’s overwhelming. How can we make sense of all these parts?

Kitamura is very interested in “passivity vs. agency”

The women she writes about are often passive in their professional and personal lives, which she believes is true to life. “Who among us has that much agency? I mean, what kind of a fantasy world are we living in? We have the illusion of agency,” she says.

I admit when I first read this quote, I had no idea what Kitamura meant. Of course I have agency! I do what I want!

However, upon a second reading, this theme does emerge in her novel, and I see the truth in it. The narrator doesn’t do much to change her situation. She is stuck inside her head (as is the reader). She thinks her husband might be having an affair, but doesn’t say anything to him. She believes the writing of the play she’s been hired to perform in is lacking, but she doesn’t address the writer about it. She is bothered by Xavier’s presence at the theater but she never confronts him. She detests Hannah but plays along. Instead, things are always brewing, bubbling underneath. She has a role to play, and she does not want to upset the balance. Who among us hasn’t been complicit in playing a part and nodding along?

Just a cute pic of Katie Kitamura and Ann Patchett. (via @katiekitamura_)

A quote I love on the power and importance of fiction and writing in These Times:

“More broadly, fiction can act as an antidote to authoritarianism. If authoritarianism thrives when people are isolated, fiction brings people together, she says. “In the most basic way, writing is about opening yourself to another person’s mind. The most intimate thing I do on a daily basis is pick up a book and open myself to another person.” And, while the Trump administration may be forcing one way of life on the world, fiction’s job is, as always, to remind people that there are “other ways of being.”

Can I get this printed on a large poster? Should we all do it? Fiction> Authoritarianism? This is one of the main reasons I read (and think everyone should read) books: to increase my empathy for others. To imagine new worlds, frightening worlds, ideal worlds, cozy worlds. Imagination, empathy, safety, connection, and problem-solving…it’s all there. I LOVE BOOKS. Protect them at all costs.

I’ll end with this banger of a quote:

“Like any working parent, the fact that she has so little time to herself, so little solitude, could make her unhappy, but she’s come to accept that ‘work comes from the mess of life’, creativity doesn’t come from a vacuum. I have to write from the middle of my life, that’s all I can do,” she says. “I’m not going to wait for a decade to pass until I have more time.”

—Katie Kitamura in an interview with The Guardian

Work comes from the mess of life!!! Whew.

I think about this quote all the time. (via Molly Young)

So, uh, the thesis of this entire section is, basically, to go read the full Guardian interview if you can. I also have this podcast interview with Katie Kitamura queued up to listen to next, which my friends

Olivia Muenter

and

Becca Freeman

over at the Bad on Paper Podcast just published.

Have you read Audition yet? Are there any other books that have made you think recently?

📕 IN SUMMARY…

Audition is a perfect book for: overthinkers, lovers of more philosophical writing, and readers who want a bit of a challenge.

Other themes in Audition—if any of these intrigue you, this might be a great book to pick up:

• Performance, and freedom from performance

• A shared reality (or rather, a delusion)

• Power and how we are in constant negotiation with any imbalances of power

• Motherhood, aging, and marriage in mid-life

READ this book if you…

• Enjoy clever novels and narrative sleights of hand, a la Atonement by Ian McEwan or Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor.

• Enjoy stream-of-consciousness, first-person narrative, and slow-burning psychological thrillers.

• Appreciate philosophical writing, sharp psychosocial analysis, and observation of characters’ behaviors, however delulu.

• Are looking for a book that will make you think about it for days after reading it.

• Enjoyed either of these past two novels by Kitamura: Intimacies or A Separation. This book feels like it belongs within the same family.

SKIP this book if you…

• Dislike books with “all vibes, no plot.” There is a plot, but it’s not a propulsive one with a ton of events that unfold. Much of the action takes place in a few contained spaces.

• You need certainty in a story.

• You don’t care for literary metapuzzles.

• You’re not into family dramas.

PREVIOUSLY ON DOWNTIME BOOKS

1. Also, lol, this quote definitely made me think of Taylor Swift’s past interviews and sound bytes of how she looks back on herself in her twenties: someone who’s been constantly shapeshifting to reinvent herself as she figures out who she really is. You know, ~just Swiftie things~!!