In Katie Kitamura’s Novels, Everything Is a Performance

In Katie Kitamura’s Novels, Everything Is a Performance

Midway through Audition, the fifth and latest novel from Katie Kitamura, the unnamed narrator, an actor, muses on a particularly successful moment of performance. She’s the star of a buzzy new play, and in a solo scene at its “hinge,” she must transform from a “woman in grief” to a “woman of action.” During rehearsals, the scene bedeviled her, but since the play’s debut, she’s been eager for the transitional moment to arrive. “I longed for it in…