Motherhood is another role, rarely self-authored
Gabriel insists A abandoned him; she insists he never existed. Both narratives trap her regardless.
Book summary
Current BestsellerGoodreads FavoritePerennial Seller
Audition
by Katie Kitamura
A renowned actor’s lunch with a stranger collapses performance, motherhood, and memory.
Published 2025
Topics
Performance StudiesMotherhoodIdentityPsychological Mystery
Reading companion
How to read Audition with Readever
Read Act I (the lunch) in a single sitting; highlight each time Gabriel shifts tone and use Readever’s AI coach to classify whether he’s cajoling, accusing, or confessing. For Act II (rehearsal pages), enable the side-by-side script view so stage directions, casting notes, and A’s inner thoughts line up on screen. End with Act III (A’s letter) and ask the AI to surface unresolved questions—perfect for book club chats.
Things to know before reading
- The narrative intentionally withholds concrete facts; tag every time a detail flips so you can review them chronologically later.
- Themes include coercion, reproductive choice, and reputational control; enable Readever’s care reminders if you need pauses.
- Multiple textual registers (interviews, stage cues, court records) appear; consider customizing fonts per register via the reading settings.
- The ending is ambiguous—use Readever’s hypothesis template to log the three most plausible timelines before peeking at community discussions.
Brief summary
Audition in a nutshell
On a rain-soaked afternoon in Manhattan, celebrated actress A pries open a letter inviting her to lunch with a young man named Gabriel. He could be a fan, an extortionist, or her long-lost son from a secret teenage pregnancy. The meeting unspools as an interrogation staged like a rehearsal—dialogue repeats, memories glitch, and every revelation feels scripted. Kitamura braids transcripts from the lunch, rehearsal notes for A’s new play, and a Möbius-strip monologue about motherhood, ambition, privilege, and artistic hunger.
Audition is less whodunit than meditation on how women must audition for every role—onstage, on set, in family lore, and in tabloids. It’s a short, razor-sharp novel that’s already shortlisted for the Booker and National Book Awards.
Key ideas overview
Audition summary of 3 key ideas
Audition dissects how performance becomes survival work for women who dare to want careers and private selves.
Rehearsal is a laboratory for truth
Pages from A’s new play mirror the lunch dialogue word for word.
Testimony shifts based on audience
When A speaks to her lawyer, she adopts legalese; with Gabriel she slips into maternal softness.
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Witness a masterclass in unreliable performance
Kitamura’s prose is spare but electric, recalling the tension of Disorientation and Intimacies while pushing further into metafiction. You’ll finish Audition in an evening yet debate it for weeks, especially with Readever’s line-level annotation tools that help you map every contradiction.
Deep dive
Key ideas in Audition
Key idea 1
Motherhood is another role, rarely self-authored
Gabriel insists A abandoned him; she insists he never existed. Both narratives trap her regardless.
The lunch scene shows A triangulated between the public who sees her as glamorous, the men who controlled her past, and a stranger who claims genetic ownership. Kitamura suggests the culture still scripts motherhood for women even when they refuse the part.
Remember
- "Note every time someone else names A—Readever tags make the power imbalance visible." - "Reproductive autonomy remains precarious when gossip outruns truth."
Key idea 2
Rehearsal is a laboratory for truth
Pages from A’s new play mirror the lunch dialogue word for word.
A cannibalizes the encounter inside rehearsal, blurring art and reality. The recursive structure dramatizes how artists metabolize experience, sometimes to escape it, sometimes to weaponize it.
Remember
- "Creative work can become a shield or confession depending on who controls the script." - "Use Readever’s compare feature to overlay lunch dialogue with rehearsal lines to see what changes."
Key idea 3
Testimony shifts based on audience
When A speaks to her lawyer, she adopts legalese; with Gabriel she slips into maternal softness.
Kitamura emphasizes code-switching as self-defense. Tone, syntax, and pacing mutate depending on who listens—something Readever’s audio playback makes palpable if you read aloud.
Remember
- "Audiences create the truths they’re willing to hear." - "Annotate each audience shift to study how language mirrors power."
Who should read Audition?
"Fans of Rachel Cusk, Deborah Levy, or Annie Ernaux who crave precise, cool-burning prose." - "Actors, dramaturgs, and creatives fascinated by rehearsal rooms as moral battlegrounds."
Readers unpacking #MeToo narratives about credibility, memory, and exploitation.
About the author
Katie Kitamura is the author of Intimacies (National Book Award finalist) and A Separation. A critic for The New York Times and a regular contributor to art magazines, she lives in New York and teaches at New York University.
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"Access the exclusive Audition rehearsal playlist within Readever to mirror the cues A references." - "Download the Scene Partner prompt pack to role-play the lunch dialogue with AI and test different tonal readings."
Join the Booker shortlist study path to compare Audition with Flesh and Misinterpretation in one guided flow.
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