Audition Audiobook By Katie Kitamura cover art

Audition

A Novel

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Audition

By: Katie Kitamura
Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
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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.

©2025 Katie Kitamura (P)2025 Penguin Audio Genre Fiction Psychological Women's Fiction Mind-Bending

Critic reviews

“Slick, sharp, strange and singular. I love [Kitamura’s] work; she’s a writer who can conjure intrigue from the scantest detail, and you’ll gulp this novel down in one in-breath.”
—Samantha Harvey in The Guardian

"[A] taut, keenly observed take on the roles we play. . . worthy of a standing ovation."—People

"A deftly crafted, slow-burn psychological thriller full of sly metafictional reflections on the nature of storytelling and identity.”—The Washington Post
All stars
Most relevant
If David Lynch ever wrote a novel, it might look something like this. Fascinating. Engaging. I’ll be thinking about it for a while.

An unsettling, fascinating portrait of a family.

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I admittedly didn’t finish (1 hr 40 min left) but didn’t feel the need to. The description of the book is incredibly different than what it was, and the transition in the middle was super confusing. Perhaps I missed the critical part that explained the transition, and perhaps that comes at the end. I didn’t feel like it was interesting enough to spend the rest of the time listening.

Unclear storyline

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Mispronunciation of a name used many times over and over again. Xavier was one of the main characters.

Writing and story

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Once I started, I did not want to put it down. Interesting exploration of motherhood, young, adult, childhood, and the roles that we play.

I don’t know how books audiobooks can be produced without editing attention to something like the correct pronunciation of a very important name within the story. Strange.

Though-provoking and uncomfortable in a good way

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The talent of this writing is the detail of someone’s inner world —I would’ve thought you had to be inside the mind of someone with a mental disorder to understand what the experience must be like, but this was an impressive feat of relaying many possible realities coexisting & how confusing that must be…made so easy to understand when the world gives so much contradictory evidence. How amazing to find a way to relay what must be a reality(ies) for many. Knowing this story or experiencing one like it is a powerful experience, leaving me surprised and in deep compassion. I still don’t know who the crazy one is, but funny how we all agreed it still made most sense to put it on the mom.

Love reality shape-shifting

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