Audition: A Novel
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY BARACK OBAMA, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORKER, NPR, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, VOGUE, TIME MAGAZINE, MARIE CLAIRE, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE GUARDIAN AND MORE!
FINALIST FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE, THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE, THE GOTHAM BOOK PRIZE, AND THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE AND THE CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION
INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
“A tightly wound family drama that reads like a psychological thriller."—NPR
“Bold, stark, genre-bending, Audition will haunt your dreams.”—The Boston Globe
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.
FINALIST FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE, THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE, THE GOTHAM BOOK PRIZE, AND THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE AND THE CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION
INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
“A tightly wound family drama that reads like a psychological thriller."—NPR
“Bold, stark, genre-bending, Audition will haunt your dreams.”—The Boston Globe
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.
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Community Reviews
I loved this and would have finished reading it in one sitting except sleep called me at 2 am! Beautifully written. Thought-provoking. It left me with my thoughts swirling, and a desire to pick up the pieces of the novel and arrange them into a coherent whole. I will be ordering her previous novels, as her prose was like nectar to me. Good luck with the Booker Prize, Katie - I can easily see why your book has been longlisted.
Reading this book felt to me like walking through dull waters thick with disease and decay, and left me with a horrible aftertaste.
Kiramura’s writing is startling in its clarity and detail. I envisioned myself walking side-by-side with the characters unseen in observing their struggles. This was one of those novels where I had to seek out interviews with the author and commentary in order to frame my understanding of what the author is attempting to do. The authors comment that this novel is about our misunderstandings and multiple understandings of our most intimate relationships helped me to understand what I had originally seen as inconsistencies in the narrative. This is a truly riveting piece of writing about the way that we struggle to understand our ourselves, and those we love.
This book is so mysterious and intriguing. When you read it, you have to suspend your disbelief and be alright not really understanding what’s happening until you finally understand what’s happening. Because I’ve spent my life in the theater and around actors and writers, I found it particularly fascinating. It’s got so many layers of meaning and I will be trying to understand each one of them for a long time. I read it in one sitting.
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