Audition

“…the success of the film happened to coincide with a change in the culture, in the writing, a change in the way of seeing. For the first time, I was allowed to be human. I could even be at the center of a story. And later still, there were parts that consumed me, so that I could say the life that was performed, on a set or in a theater, could at times feel more real to me than my actual life.”

This novel by Katie Kitamura has been shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize. It refers to the profession of acting but is more about the personal roles people play. The narrator is an actress in mid-career who is rehearsing for a role in an upcoming play. She meets a handsome young man named Xavier at an upscale restaurant for lunch and we wonder what their relationship is. Is it a romantic liaison? He unsettlingly claims to be her son.

The story diverges and the reader is thrown off balance, wondering what is real and what is not. The actress doesn’t have a son or does she? She resets the story but with some important changes. It is a brilliantly constructed novel but I’m not sure that this device worked for me. In fact I found it frustrating.

The book raises questions about what motherhood actually is. The familial relationships it describes are realistically fraught but it keeps the reader at an emotional distance. It made me think but I wouldn’t read it again.