Audition
A Novel
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٣٫٦ - ١١٢ من التقييمات
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- 14٫99 US$
وصف الناشر
NAMED A 2025 “ESSENTIAL READ” BY THE NEW YORKER AND A TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME MAGAZINE AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORKER, NPR, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, VOGUE, TIME MAGAZINE, MARIE CLAIRE, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE GUARDIAN, BOOK RIOT, ESQUIRE, THE NEW REPUBLIC, KIRKUS, SHELF AWARENESS AND MORE!
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 BOOKER PRIZE
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kitamura (Intimacies) serves up a taut and alluring novel about a mysterious relationship between a middle-aged woman and a young man. The unnamed narrator, a well-known theater actor, meets Xavier at a restaurant in New York City. Their first meeting took place two weeks earlier, and the woman doles out sparse and subtle clues in her narration, comparing her lunch with Xavier, now a college student, to one she had with her father in Paris. Kitamura keeps the reader guessing as to whether the characters are mother and son, lovers, or something else. Shortly after the lunch, Xavier becomes more involved in the narrator's life, working as an assistant for the director of a play in which the narrator stars. She reflects on her ambivalence toward motherhood and the long-ago miscarriage she had with her husband, Tomas, after which she had a series of affairs. About Xavier, the narrator is secretive not only with the reader but with Tomas, and his suspicion that they're having an affair threatens their marriage. In the novel's second half, Kitamura further complicates the narrator and Xavier's murky relationship. Throughout, she succeeds in creating a complex and engrossing portrayal of her characters' blurry boundaries. Readers won't be able to put this down.
مراجعات العملاء
Quick and Fascinating
A single novel in two parts - both sections captivating and awkward…. And the chapters read quickly, poignantly….
Took me back to my walking the streets of NYC, stopping into the trendiest of restaurants and eyeing other patrons, wondering if their lives might be as fascinating as this tale could be.
Teeth clenched.
Found myself saying ‘no, no no.’ multiple times…
Enjoyed it.
Great writing but not fun
Smart, masterfully written, but the last half was unenjoyable.
My book is missing Part 1/2
Well darn. The third part of my book is missing: Part 1 & 1/2 where the transition of not-son to birth-son takes place. I’m a fan of Katie Katamura's books, but this one, lacking that third part, the one that might have made possible the suspension of my disbelief, really ruined this novel for me. Part 1 & 1/2 would be essential to my accepting the Part 2., though I’m not certain that could have happened anyway. It would take some kind of miraculous alchemy to make Part 2 seem possible. It's problematic. I think it's just too over-the-top to be considered seriously. The second half of this book was like trying to analyze a Dali painting. I only gave it 2 stars because I'm a fan. If you’re a first-time reader of this author—go back to a previous book.