Audition is an unsettling psychological thriller that pushes the boundaries of storytelling and will leave you deep in thought when you finish the book.

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Audition opens with the unnamed narrator, a middle aged actress, meeting a handsome young man named Xavier in a restaurant. Xavier believes he may be her son; she says that’s physically impossible. Around them diners and waiters observe, trying to figure out their relationship. This opening scene draws readers into a question that will drive much of their experience with this book: Who is Xavier, and what does he want?

The actress muddles through rehearsals for a play that’s opening soon; she’s struggling with one scene in particular in the middle of the play that she can’t find the center of, but is critical to her character’s transformation. Meanwhile her not-son Xavier has wormed his way into the production as an assistant to the director. His presence unsettles the actress as she watches him while he “gives good son” to the director.

The story takes an abrupt turn at the end of Part 1, when the director calls the actress on stage to rehearse the troubling scene and says, “we begin now.” Thus the curtain falls on Part 1.

When it rises again on Part 2, it reveals a completely different world. The actress has mastered the troubling scene; she has become addicted to performing it every night, to exploring the boundaries of the scene, the “infinite contingency, the range of possibility laid out in front of [her].” The once-hated scene has become the play’s hinge and moment of transformation.

The actress too has transformed, for in this part of the story she is indeed Xavier’s mother – a fact which directly contradicts the first part of the book. These unexplained circumstances destabilize the actress and the reader as the author explores identity and the various roles we play, challenging our understanding of reality. The prose is spare and taut, contributing to an increasing sense of unease.

It is impossible as a reader to pin down the truth in this book. I have my own theory and was happy to learn in an NPR interview with the author that she never intended for the reader to solve the puzzle – she wrote it deliberately to be open to interpretation and be read in three or four different ways. This will frustrate readers who want the answers to be revealed by the end of the book, but I really loved the ambiguity of it.

Read Audition if you enjoy unsettling psychological thrillers that leave you deep in thought rather than with resolution, and admire authors who push the boundaries of their craft.