I don’t even know where to start with this novel.
I read it for class and now I CANNOT stop thinking about it.
Audition by Katie Kitamura is a fiction novel that surrounds an unnamed narrator as her life unravels. It’s honestly a hard book to explain, but I have to get out my obsession somehow.
The book is split into two VERY DIFFERENT parts.
In Part I of Audition, our narrator is an actress who is currently working on a stage production. Her relationship with her husband, Tomas, is rocky at the moment due to his suspicions about her fidelity.
She meets a young man named Xavier who claims to be her son, which is impossible because our narrator had an abortion and a miscarriage, so she has never birthed children. A weird relationship sparks between Xavier and our narrator when Xavier begins working on the same production.
It is soon revealed that the production is doomed. The writer of the play has made our narrator’s character distinctly different when compared to Act I and Act II. Our narrator has one scene in the middle of the play that is supposed to bind the two completely different personalities into one character, but she has no idea how she can possibly make these people the same person.
Part I ends with a text from her husband demanding that they need to talk.
Then you flip the page to Part II. This is where things get freaky… and interesting!
In Part II, our narrator is a huge success. She figured out how to connect the two personalities in the play and she nails her performance.
Her issues with Tomas seem erased as they act as warm parents to Xavier. They refer to him as their son for the entirety of Part II.
Xavier moves into their apartment and the three of them begin living together as a family. There’s a new dynamic, a weirdness in the air. It becomes even stranger when Xavier asks the narrator and her husband if his girlfriend, Hana, can come live with them. The narrator does not approve of Hana and there is some tension in their interactions. The narrator also sees Tomas taking quite the liking Hana. Giving her longing looks and linger touches.
One day the narrator comes home to find Hana, Xavier, and her husband playing an odd game. Running around the room, jumping, and saying things like “I’ll find you”. The narrator becomes scared and confused, and stops the game. She demands Hana leave. She tries to talk to Xavier and Tomas about what she saw, but there isn’t much that can be explained.
At the very end of the novel, Xavier gives our narrator a thick stack of pages. When questioned about it, he answers that it is a monologue he wrote about a woman who slowly loses touch with reality.
There are many interpretations for this novel. I recommend reading it and then doing some EXTENSIVE research into theories and explanations. It was really fun!!
One of the interpretations is that one part is real while the other part is fantasy. For example, Part I is the real and the Part II is the fantasy that the narrator dreams of. The dreams of domestic life with a child that she could never have.
Another is that this is all the monologue Xavier wrote. That everything that occurred is just a story and none of it is real.
There’s the obvious theory that she really is slowly losing touch with reality. That this is her son and that she has lost her mind. That this is her son’s way of grounding her back to Earth.
The one I like the best is that she is stuck playing a part. She is embodying a role, and cannot distinguish what is her and what is the part anymore. She’s trapped under a mask and can’t take it off, this mask of being a mother. She has gotten too deep into her character.
An interesting theory that I saw was that she IS the character in the play. As I mentioned, in the play there is a character who acts different in Act I and Act II, almost like the character is two different people. The narrator finds it hard to try to bridge the gap between these two different personalities and connect them as the same character.
Isn’t that VERY similar to the novel? We see two different versions of her in Part I and Part II, without a way to show how the narrator from Part I BECAME the narrator in Part II. They’re extremely different people, but still the same person. So maybe, she is in the play.
I’m honestly surprised I liked this novel as much as I did. I’m not a huge fan of post-modern meta fiction, but this really moved me. I love a novel that makes me think after reading it.
I mean what’s the point if after you flip to the last page, you just toss the novel and you’re onto the next one? There’s meaning in the contemplation of a piece after finishing it.
I can’t tell you how obsessed I am with this novel. I know it might sound stupid and maybe my explanation does not do the novel justice, but this novel was 10/10 for me. I’m STILL thinking about it.
I thought about it so much that I had to write an article about it!
Give Katie Kitamura a chance. Even if you’re not as in love with this novel as I am, I can PROMISE you, you will not regret a single word you read.