Audition - Katie Kitamura

 Audition is the fourth of the six books I read, of the Booker Short List. It is to date, the most experimental in terms of form of the lot, even exceeding the minimalist approach taken by 'Flesh', this year's winner. So much so, it is a difficult task to talk about this book without spoilers - but try, I will.

The book, as narrated by the unnamed actress has two unmistakable characteristics, which is a testament to the world of the novel, and hence the naturalness brought upon to the novel. As appropriate of a narration by an actress, she reads each event as it happens in close deep detail, just like a good actress would read, or even imagine the tension any scene she casts would bring. In contrast, she is gives relative lesser importance to whole events that have happened - for example her former affairs, which she refers to only when she is almost forced to as part of the narration - episodes of regret that are best covered with deep involvement in her current life. In contrast she reads events as they happen -  the impact that Xavior makes on his entry to the play rehearsal, or to a restaurant, in some detail.

Certain references in part one of the novel, allow coming into terms of part two somewhat easy.

“People always talked about having children as an event, as a thing that took place, they forgot that not having children was also something that took place, that is to say it wasn’t a question of absence, a question of lack, it had its own presence in the world, it was its own event.”

 On the strength of this, we can measure the opposite of this through our narrator's reaction when two women have close relations with Xavier, who supposedly "gave good son" - Anne and Hannah - reading from the narrator's perspective we are not shown of her own jealousy, but that of the other party, and at times "bitchiness" from the other party.

There is also the 'joke' that Xavier tells in chapter six, in which he says  his father pretended to love his mother and his children as per the therapist's advice (at a time when he had grown tired of his family), and subsequently it worked out well. This episode can be  taken as a cue to part two. 

In essence one could say part two is an act in agreement, and mutual arrangement - even to the level of imagining the adolescence of Xavier as narrated by our protagonist. 

"We had been playing parts, and for a period- for as long as we understood our roles, for as long as we participated in the careful collusion that is a story, that is a family, told by one person to another - the mechanism had held". But the deeper the complicity, and the longer it is sustained, the less give there is, the more binding and unforgiving the contract, and in the end it took very little for the whole thing to collapse."

It would be a lie to say that this I liked this novel with all my heart - but that's just a personal leaning. However, respect for what the author has done with this book of less than 200 pages is uncontested, and awe inspiring. The author has used the narration of a natural actress, and then brought the act to the forefront. Thus, for originality, and pure literary tact the book scores high marks.

Rating: ***1/2