Auditionby Katie Kitamura(Riverhead) is out April 8.
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In novels about acting, what happens onstage tends to really matter.
We dont know the plotline.
We dont know the setting.
We dont know anything about the characters or the cast.
Kitamura has been practicing such sleight of hand for a while.
InAudition,the gaps are a lot deeper.
When the story begins, were in the blankest of places: a restaurant in the Financial District.
Its around lunchtime, and the dining room is large and generic.
The narrator, a respected middle-aged actress, is there to meet a younger man named Xavier.
The other people in the restaurant peer at them disapprovingly, assuming some illicit age-gap relationship.
The situation was more dangerous than I had previously understood.
What happens when the protagonists traits are withheld, undermined, and revised again and again?
After a couple of chapters, we find out what went on between the actress and Xavier.
The dates line up, and they look alike.
Despite the conclusiveness of her answer, she seems a little unsure, or at least troubled.
Youd be right to think this all sounds slightly heady.
It also seems like the culmination of something.
(They are not listed on the Also by Katie Kitamura page at the front ofAudition.)
InAudition,the aridity is the point, but it can be hard to stomach.
Not that there arent some genuine thrills.
I realized that I was being handled by Tomas, the narrator thinks indignantly during one seemingly friendly conversation.
Who are these people to one another, really?
We may not need to know.
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