Audition by Katie Kitemura

Cleaved together. That's one expression that stuck most after reading Katie Kitemura's Audition. At its core, I felt it to be a story about bringing together two elements which are definitively, irreparably, tragically separate. The past and the present. The before and the after. The self and the persona. The wife and the husband. The mother and the son. The here and the there. The first half and the second half.

Audition follows an unnamed actress as she narrates events leading up to the staging of a play entitled Opposite Shores in the first half of the novel, and her experience in performing the role up until the play's final run in the latter half. Interestingly, we find in passing that the name of the play in the second half has inexplicably changed to Rivers.

This is not the only apparent inconsistency from the first half of the book. It is not even the most dramatic or glaring one. It is however representative of the story in general.

At first I wondered "Wait, when did they change the title of the play?" The author does not tell us how it changed, much less why it changed. All we know is that it changed. Of course, you cannot help but wonder. You cannot help but theorise. You cannot help but try to bridge the gap in your own mind as to why this happened. Maybe it was called Rivers all along and the narrator made a mistake. Maybe she's losing her mind. Maybe we've entered a parallel universe in which the play is called Rivers. It was always Rivers. But this is just your brain steeped in cognitive dissonance, trying to uncleave the two parts together. If anything, this effect was so strong that I found myself distracted while reading, trying to glue the two halves together.

I think though that the deeper points being raised in this story are ultimately what give Audition its depth and what stuck with me. I found the plot's structure to be an efficient and effective means of triggering that sense of unease of not being able to make sense of something. Like when your partner does something that is totally out of character and you're left wondering whether you really know who they are after all. Or when you put on a mask, ostensibly for the benefit of others, until you lose sight of the line demarcating your person from your persona.

Audition is beautifully written, with excellent characterisation. Some characters, like Xavier, are never really understood, and that I suspect is part of the point. Others, like Tomas, are very richly characterised, if only from the protagonist's point of view. The end does not resolve some questions we may have about some of the characters, and I get the sense that the narrator does not want to look into matters too closely.

So, all in all, I loved Katie Kitemura's Audition. Enjoyable to read and even moreso to think about after the narrator's monologue is through.