This very literary novel is quite divisive because for some readers it provides so much to consider and discuss in terms of its themes and story. However, readers who prefer novels with definitive conclusions may be extremely frustrated by it. I was intrigued by many of the tantalising details and surprising connections I found in it. My natural inclination is to read this book like a puzzle where I pour over it searching for clues and answers – and I have some theories! However, I know that there's no one way of understanding this book. There's a short NPR interview with Kitamura where she states “It's very much a kind of book that's open to interpretation. It's been designed so that it can be read in two or three or maybe even four different ways.”
I think there's a potential issue with self-consciously writing a novel that's open to so many interpretations as its story could end up feeling like it doesn't mean anything because the author has inserted so many ambiguous and potentially contradictory statements. Nevertheless, I did enjoy reading this book and felt emotionally engaged by its themes. It's alternately fun and infuriating to consider its many meanings and it's difficult to discuss without giving spoilers so you probably won't want to read this post until after completing the book.
This story focuses on an unnamed central character who is an actress living in New York City and her relationship with her husband Tomas as well as her shifting connection to a mysterious young man named Xavier. Perhaps not being named allows her a degree of anonymity that she doesn't feel is available to her as a person and a performer. Not only does she act on stage but she frequently feels like she's playing a role in real life based on how other people perceive her. However, it also feels like her profession is a natural fit for this character who is very self conscious and feels preoccupied about how others perceive/define her. As she meets Xavier in the restaurant in the first part she notices how other people react to how she is a woman in her late 40s meeting a “beautiful” young man. I wonder about the degree to which her interpretation of other people's reaction to them is real or how much it reflects her own sense of discomfort in this unusual meeting. We're only granted access to her consciousness and so much of the book seems rooted in her uncertainty about the relation between herself and others.
Even though there isn't a single solution I still think it's intriguing and worthwhile to consider this story. It meditates a lot on the nature of enacting roles within our own lives whether that be as a spouse, parent, friend or a woman. This is very much a story in two parts and the relation between these sections seems to me to be the larger question – rather than the outcome of the relationships between the characters. In several ways, the two parts of the book seem to contradict each other but I think they're also connected in some integral ways. There's a significant line early on in the novel where she states “There are always two stories taking place at once, the narrative inside the play and the narrative around it, and the boundary between the two is more porous than you might think, that is both the danger and the excitement of the performance.” The same seems to be true in the reading experience. There is the text on the page that the author has written and then there is the interpretation going on inside the reader's head.
In the first part on the book she's been in rehearsals for a play 'The Opposite Shore' where she plays a pivotal role but she's uncertain about how a crucial central scene/monologue is working. In the second part of the book she's been performing in a play called 'Rivers' and experiencing a very successful run. It feels to me like the same play from the first part of the book but it's unclear whether it's another one entirely or if the title has simply changed between rehearsals and its run. We never find out much about the play(s) or the substance of her central monologue within it except that her interpretation of this speech and its meaning changes for her night by night. I think it's significant that she's been able to embrace the improvisational nature of her performance in the second part of the book whereas in the first part she's striving more for the play's meaning to be defined so she can enact this on stage. I wonder if her confidence and the relative success she feels as a performer between the two sections bears weight upon how she relates to her husband Tomas and Xavier.
The most obvious and significant switch between the two parts of the book is that Xavier changes from not being her son to being her son. In the first part Xavier initially believes she's his long-lost mother based on something a journalist misrepresented her saying in an interview. But she knows his being her son is impossible.. However, in the second part Xavier is her and Tomas' son and he moves back into their apartment. Though his familial status is never questioned there are indicators that his early life as her child is hazy and might not be real. She remarks “in some ways when I looked back on his childhood, he was at once there but also not there. Or perhaps it was that I was at once there but also not there, as if Xavier's childhood had taken place in my vicinity, with the details somehow escaping me.” And in a later part she states “my memory was alarmingly inconsistent and full of gaps, so that I could not really say how it had been, at various stages of his life, his childhood and adolescence... none of it seemed like the record of events that had actually taken place.” Has she merely convinced herself that he is actually her son when he isn't or has she just forgotten aspects of his early life or does she have a psychological condition (which Tomas and Xavier cryptically refer to) which has created gaps in her memory like this? Has she always been his mother but in the first part of the novel she denied this to herself? Like so much in this book it's never made clear.
There are many ways to interpret this story. For me it feels most prominently about parenthood, the decision whether or not to become a parent and how this decision affects a relationship. She denies that there could be any possibility Xavier is her child in the first part yet she agrees to meet him at a restaurant. Does she like the idea of imagining him as a potential son/protégé? Or is she considering he might become a lover? Or does she just enjoy having an attractive young man being attentive to her? Whatever her motives the meeting creates tension in her relationship as Tomas enters the restaurant and though she tries signalling to him he doesn't appear to see her. Yet when they are discussing their day later she doesn't admit to being in the restaurant or meeting Xavier. She reveals she's had affairs in the past – partly as a consequence of the difficulties they experienced in their relationship after her miscarriage. Tomas sends her a worrying message at the end of the first part where he says they need to talk and that he doesn't want to carry on in this way. Perhaps he's fed up with there being any secrets/lies between them. Or perhaps he's yearning for a solution that will cement their relationship such as having Xavier play the part of their son.
The second part of the story could be an alternate reality where Xavier has always been their son (or is it the same reality where he's always been their son?) Or they might have come to some agreement where Xavier plays the part of their son. Whatever the situation is the narrator, Tomas and Xavier all act as if he is and has always been their son as he moves into their apartment. Previously their apartment had been described as spacious with enough room for the couple to work separately. However when Xavier moves in things start to feel much more cramped. Though he initially spends a lot of time out of the apartment working with Anne he eventually spends more and more time in their communal space. A giant ugly desk is purchased for him which takes up a lot of room. And eventually Hana moves into the apartment as well. She is immediately a figure of animosity and eventually she's a sexual threat when the narrator discovers both Xavier and Tomas playfully wrestling with her in a sexually suggestive way. This was a very strange moment and I wonder if it was perhaps just the narrator's paranoid fantasy rather than something which takes place in reality. It seems significant that in both parts of the book the narrator's relationship with Tomas eventually becomes very strained. So I feel like whether or not they have a son together it doesn't detract from the fact that the narrator is ageing and begins to feel like she could be replaced by someone like Hana.
At the end of the second part she remarks “I stand on this stage, in the story he has created, in the role he has made.” Since Xavier has been working on his own play (or is it Hana who has been writing it since she spent more time working at the desk?) it seems like the narrator is embodying a role he's created for her. It's been suggested that this novel could work like a mobius strip which circles back to the book's beginning. So perhaps the first part of the novel is in fact the play Xavier has written where she is freed to pursue her desire to keep performing and the possibility of a life where she wasn't subject to the responsibilities of parenthood. Performance seems to open her life up to endless possibilities and the ability to constantly reinvent herself. It is “the control that cedes to freedom” but it doesn't allow her to control how others see her or control the relationships she has with other people. Part of the tragedy of this novel and the sense of dread it evokes feels like it comes from an increasing awareness of her mortality and a narrowing lack of possibilities for her personal future. No matter how much she reinvents herself on stage or in her life people will always make their own assumptions about her and she will keep getting older (as we all are.) Her continuing relationship with Tomas is never a certainty. Nor is her career as an actress.
Overall I really appreciated this novel and the ideas it raises. Kitamura's writing has been likened to Rachel Cusk which makes sense (although personally I find some of Cusk's more recent work frustrating.) In interviews Kitamura has cited Ira Levin's novel “Rosemary's Baby” as an influence which makes sense given the uneasy atmosphere in the second part of the book. She's also described how she wrote much of it during the recent pandemic which also makes a lot of sense given the second part is so much about renegotiating connections with close family members in the increasingly claustrophobic space of the home. “Audition” reminds me somewhat of “On the Calculation of Volume” as a high concept book which prompts a reconsideration about the nature of reality and our relationships. However, this novel also made me think about Edward Albee's play 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' where a middle age couple imagine that they've had a son and jointly invent a backstory for him. It also reminded me of Joyce Carol Oates' novel “Blonde” and Susan Sontag's novel “In America” as both these novels feature a central protagonist who is a famous actress and finds the performance she inhabits bleeds into reality and the meaning of an essence of “self” becomes harder to define. I find ideas around performing and its relation to truth really interesting so I really appreciate the situation and possibilities presented in Kitamura's novel.
Nevertheless “Audition” didn't feel like an entirely satisfying story like I get from a more traditional novel. It's difficult to grasp anything fixed about the narrator (except that she likes pastries) since she's always in a state of flux. Similarly I don't feel like I intimately know Tomas or Xavier and especially not Hana who felt more like someone put into the story as someone the narrator reacts to and against (although an argument could be made that Hana doesn't actually exist.) So ultimately I appreciate how “Audition” gave me a lot of interesting things to contemplate but I didn't totally fall for its story or characters. However, I've loved discussing it and possible theories regarding its story with other readers.
