Audition

A Novel

De: Katie Kitamura

Narrado por: Traci Kato-Kiriyama

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.

©2025 Katie Kitamura (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Slick, sharp, strange and singular. I love [Kitamura’s] work; she’s a writer who can conjure intrigue from the scantest detail, and you’ll gulp this novel down in one in-breath.”
—Samantha Harvey in The Guardian

"[A] taut, keenly observed take on the roles we play. . . worthy of a standing ovation."—People

"A deftly crafted, slow-burn psychological thriller full of sly metafictional reflections on the nature of storytelling and identity.”—The Washington Post

An unsettling, fascinating portrait of a family.

If David Lynch ever wrote a novel, it might look something like this. Fascinating. Engaging. I’ll be thinking about it for a while.

Writing and story

Mispronunciation of a name used many times over and over again. Xavier was one of the main characters.

Though-provoking and uncomfortable in a good way

Once I started, I did not want to put it down. Interesting exploration of motherhood, young, adult, childhood, and the roles that we play.

I don’t know how books audiobooks can be produced without editing attention to something like the correct pronunciation of a very important name within the story. Strange.

Love reality shape-shifting

The talent of this writing is the detail of someone’s inner world —I would’ve thought you had to be inside the mind of someone with a mental disorder to understand what the experience must be like, but this was an impressive feat of relaying many possible realities coexisting & how confusing that must be…made so easy to understand when the world gives so much contradictory evidence. How amazing to find a way to relay what must be a reality(ies) for many. Knowing this story or experiencing one like it is a powerful experience, leaving me surprised and in deep compassion. I still don’t know who the crazy one is, but funny how we all agreed it still made most sense to put it on the mom.

What a wildly unexpected narrative.

Even going into this book knowing it was going to be a weaving of complications I found myself never seeing into the future. It was a wild ride, one that I found wholly enjoyable.

Unclear storyline

I admittedly didn’t finish (1 hr 40 min left) but didn’t feel the need to. The description of the book is incredibly different than what it was, and the transition in the middle was super confusing. Perhaps I missed the critical part that explained the transition, and perhaps that comes at the end. I didn’t feel like it was interesting enough to spend the rest of the time listening.

Left up to the reader

I liked the dichotomy in the story. I thought the character development of the husband was really good. I was hoping to find out an explanation for the mother/son relationship but I understand the author not answering everything. Beautifully written. The exquisite details were very effective and not at all over the top or tiring. I listened to the book after hearing K.K.'s interview on NPR. I'm glad I caught that. Well done, Katie!!

Good

Something different than my usual, not bad . Thought it was going to be something different than it was overall.

interesting read - overall pretty good

I almost didn't read this book because of all the bad reviews, but I'm glad I persevered. Whilenit wasn't a top read for me, it is very much worth reading. Clever, well-written, it rides between psychological drama and fantasy in a unique and intriguing way.

Now to address a couple of gripes with the bad reviews:
1. How can so many people be so literal? The story is clearly about duality and performance as concepts. The structure of the novel (the two seemingly disparate "parts") that so many people were perplexed by reflect this in an embodied manner and also pretty cleverly. If you don't think abstractly or in metaphor, perhaps this is not the book for you.

2. Hate to break it to many of you but there is actually more than one way to pronounce the name Xavier. I would bet money that the people ignorantly criticizing the pronunciation of the narrator are the same people who simply couldn't believe there could be more to this story than a literal narrative about a woman who either does or does not have a son. Yikes.

great book, not-so-great narrator

the reader would have been fine- albeit somewhat robotic- had she not pronounced the silent “g” at the end of every word ending in “ing”, making either a hard “g” or a “k” sound. it was distracting and pretty goll dog annoying. i could understand if it were a first-person narrative about a quirky woman who pronounces the “g” at the end of every “ing”. we’ll wait for that book. unfortunately, this was not that.