Everyone in the bookish realm in France right now seems to read Audition by Katie Kitamura right now. No matter how much I love reading in French - more than words can say - I rather wanted to read the original English version, but I can understand why the book may have been so successful there: the poetry of the language and the fluidity of the prose are suited very well for certain literary preferences in the Hexagon.
Like in Intimacies, the main storyteller, a woman, is not named. This time, she is an actress, on an audition, and her profession invites to ambiguity. There is a young man, Xavier, she mets at the beginning, ´half her age´, without letting her husband know, who ends up - through a seizure of the narrative - as the son writing a play for his mother.
This ambiguity however is diffusing the scene, as almost every single episode and encounter in the book can be read from at least two perspectives. More than a story, Audition is an intellectual approach: as a literary/intellectual encouter it provokes the reaction of the reader, requests our intellectual involvement. We are lost in so many details, but the meaning, as well as the chain of events escape us completely. As a reader, you feel amnesiac, unable to trace the events and their cause. After all, it´s an audition.
Audition is under 200 pages, but I needed more than a week to read this book. The writing is so dense that every few paragraphs requested time for thinking and dissecting.
The book is maybe too experiemental as I expected, but nevertheless chiselled in the smallest details.
Rating: 3.5 stars
