Audition

The novel is split into two distinct halves, with Part Two exploring a kind of parallel universe to the world set up in Part One. In an interview with the Booker Prizes, Katie Kitamura explained, ‘Reading the book requires holding two separate versions of events in your head at the same time. It’s either/or, and also and’. What did you think of the novel’s contradicting storylines? Was it possible to hold dissonant versions of events in your head?

In the first part of the book, the narrator doesn’t have children, while in the second part, she is a mother. What aspects of her personality did you recognise had changed between these two identities?

Speaking with Interview Magazine, Kitamura said, ‘With this book in particular, I wanted to invite the reader to step inside and to create the book with me. It was important to create footholds, points of stability and shared reference, so that the book had the foundation from which multiple variations or interpretations could grow.’ Do you think Kitamura achieved this with Audition?

In the same interview, Kitamura said that she wanted the book to be ‘a little bit like a David Lynch film, in the sense that the effect is the effect.’ What do you think she meant by that? What aspects of David Lynch’s film work do you think she successfully replicated?

In the first part of the story, the narrator can’t seem to access the character she is portraying on stage to its full extent. Kitamura doesn’t reveal much about the play beyond the general idea that it contains grief and the idea of transformation. Why do you think she doesn’t explain the full context of the play, considering it’s a major part of the storyline across the two sections of the book?

In the first part of the book, the play is called ‘The Opposite Shore’, while in the second part, it’s called ‘Rivers’. Why do you think Kitamura changed the play’s title and what do you think these two different names mean?

The idea of performance is a major theme in the book, both within the narrator’s professional life as an actor and her personal life with her family and how she performs her domestic duties. The narrator states that, ‘I looked across at Tomas and I knew he was not convinced, that some part of him wished to stay inside the performance, inside the fantasy, I could see the thought moving through his head and nearly settling, what was a family if not a shared delusion, a mutual construction?’ What do you think she meant by that?

In the Chicago Review of Books, Dez Deshaies describes Kitamura’s writing as ‘distinctive’, saying that her ‘prose is so acrobatic it lands before a reader realises it has leapt.’ Do you agree? What did you enjoy most about Kitamura’s writing style and what did you find challenging?

Tomas sees the narrator and Xavier together at a restaurant but doesn’t probe, beyond asking ‘You’re not cheating on me again, are you?’. The narrator can’t understand why her husband doesn’t demand an explanation or more reassurance. Why do you think Tomas reacted in the way that he did? What did you make of the relationship between the narrator and Tomas, and how it evolves between Parts One and Two?

In the second part of the book, Xavier moves in with the narrator and Tomas, who soon start to behave almost like domestic servants – buying him furniture and belongings and constantly bringing him food and drinks. Why do you think Kitamura makes the couple behave in such a subservient way and put Xavier’s desires ahead of their own?

Towards the end of the novel, the narrator says, ‘Here, it is possible to be two things at once. Not a splitting of personality or psyche, but the natural superimposition of one mind on top of another mind. In the space between them, a performance becomes possible.’ What do you think she means by this?