I picked up this book after seeing it on President Obama’s Reading List for 2025. So far, I’ve enjoyed all of the books he’s recommended for various reasons. This one was not quite up to the other books I’ve read from that list, but it was well-written and did make me think.

The stories in Audition are told in the first-person perspective. The narrator is an actress in live theater in New York City. In the first part of the book, she is in rehearsals for a new play when a young man asks to meet her. Xavier is adopted and searching for his birthmother, who he believes she is based on a n interview she gave many years ago. There is a feeling here that the woman is disappointed. She knows she is getting on in years and recognizes that the man is young enough to be her son, but that’s not the image she seems to want to project. She seems to prefer the notion that he is infatuated with her and would like to have an affair. The actress is married to a writer names Tomas, but it hasn’t always been a good marriage.

Xavier inserts himself into her life by taking a job with the director of the play as her assistant. Meanwhile, the actress is struggling with a transitional scene in the play which links together the two parts of the play. She is ready to blame everyone else, including the play’s writer, for her inability to perfect the scene. At the same time, Xavier’s presence causes her to reflect on her life and the choices she made. At one time there was the possibility of motherhood, but it was lost.

Midway through, Audition changes. It is still the first-person narrative, but it jumps to the point where the play is a big success and the actress has given the performance of her career. In this setting, Xavier is the child of the actress and Tomas. He seems to be the perfect son, but there is a divide between him and his mother that she is not really aware of.

I came away from this wondering what I’d read. On one hand, Audition seemed to give two very different perspectives on a woman’s life. In one she hasn’t had children. She seemed to accept that and almost be happy about it until Xavier enters her life. In the second, she is a mother experiencing empty-nest syndrome who thinks she has a great relationship with her son, only to find out it’s not the case. In either situation, it seems to say that she and Tomas will end up alone. Was it worth it?

But then, I don’t think that is all that Audition wanted to be. There is the question of the play and her performance. There is something of a rivalry with the director in the first part of the story, even though she considers her a friend. When Xavier takes the job as the director’s assistant, the actress seems to be worried he will stop looking to her as a parental figure. There are questions about her marriage that are never resolved. There are issues with the routines she falls into in her life.

At one point, I thought maybe she was going crazy and this was how it manifested, but that wasn’t the case either. Audition is a hard book to pin down. Although it’s beautifully written with some fantastic descriptions of life in New York City, I had a hard time understanding what the author was trying to convey, and came away from it more confused than anythign else. The audiobook is narrated by Traci Kato-Kiriyama, who does a great job with the beautiful prose, but it didn’t help me understand what the book was about any better,

I can’t say I would recommend picking this up. Maybe some people will read Audition and come away understanding what it’s about better than I did. I’m sure President Obama must have gotten more out of it than I did for it to appear on his reading list.