Having appreciated Intimacies by this author, I was eager to read this new one, published in April. And I loved it. First, because it threw me off balance and then with a closer look, it was the artistry that pleased me. It’s appropriately set in the world of theatre as it examines how we live our lives as the roles we inhabit, sometimes for our whole lives, sometimes for shorter periods.
The narrator, a middle-aged successful stage and film actress in New York, begins by telling about meeting an attractive young man for lunch and being self-conscious that people might think he is her young boyfriend. We learn a bit later that he had met with her previously because he believed she was his mother. She emphatically told him that was not possible, but she saw what an effort he made to adopt mannerisms she had used in films. She felt “a jolt of unforced admiration, for the totality of his performance. I barely knew what the performance was for, what form it took or what purpose it served, but I understood even then that it was a performance of the highest order.” Xavier, the young man, was given a job by the director of the play the narrator was in and he became a helpful colleague to the actress as well.
The narrator recounts the story of an actor’s film performance she found extremely affecting. She later learned from that film’s director that the actor was no longer able to learn his lines and his affecting performance was the result of his  confusion. She learned that “the source of the performance’s strength… is the fact that it is no performance at all. That confusion that you see on-screen is completely real. You are looking at a man lost, with no sense of what the story is, trapped inside the scene, with the camera lens staring at him, you are watching a man who is seeing his life and his career drift away.” Turns out we can completely misinterpret a person’s performance.
When the second part of the novel opens, the narrator, her husband Tomas, and Xavier are toasting the success of the play. While the director Anne and Xavier are moving on to other roles, the narrator will continue to perform in the play. As she reflects on the importance of Anne and Xavier in her success in the role, she notes how supportive Anne has been of Xavier and how her support “allowed Xavier to see himself differently, to imagine new possibilities—Anne on the one hand, and me on the other, Xavier’s mother.” Wait, what??
In this part of the book she remembers what it was like to have the messy teenage Xavier in their apartment while she and Tomas prepare for Xavier to stay with them for an unspecified amount of time. The shifting role of Tomas, from the distant father to his acceptance of Xavier and his girlfriend taking over the living room, contrasts with the narrator who is mystified by Tomas’ acceptance and finds herself the less favored parent. The gradual shifts in roles were mesmerizing. And with a few more role changes, the story comes to an end.
Katie Kitamura, Audition, Riverhead Books, 2025, 197 pages (I read the kindle version). Available in the public library.