All the world's a stage And all the men and women merely players

I'm seeing a lot of misguided criticism in the forum and the reviews for this book! Am I here to tell you you're wrong? Yes, and I'm sorry. I'm also going to keep this review spoiler free, which means I'm not going to get to comment fully on my interpretation of the ending, but alas.

This book does not provide a straightforward narrative, nor does it provide a strong character or character development. That's not the point! And I'm going to convince you that that works for what Kitamura is doing (or what I think she's doing, because she's probably working on a much higher level than I was able to grasp).

Early on in the book, the (unnamed) narrator remarks to herself that the way her husband asked a question was "both direct and distressingly oblique." That is a perfect description of this novel. The prose itself is clear and sparse; Kitamura provides neat descriptions of what appear to be very normal human interactions and experiences. When they are all put together in this book, everything ceases to make sense.

The reader is left questioning what they just read. Was it two parallel stories sewn together? Was it a book from the perspective of a delusional character? Was it both?

However, Kitamura is not intending for the narrative arc to be the vehicle for her commentary. In this way, Audition is a commentary on the boundaries imposed on the novel as a form. Why must the author be restricted to the same constraints of time and space that reality is? Is not a (or the) point of art to comment on life by pushing the limits of what life itself can be? By working outside of these constraints, Kitamura is able to play with character in a way that straightforward narratives simply cannot. We can see characters in different roles and interrogate how different lives(??) would mould them.

This is not a character study, but a study of character. I saw some people complaining about the long monologue about performance near the middle of the novel. That was one of the most important parts of the book! At one point the character remarks to herself:

There are always two stories taking place at once, the narrative inside the play and the
narrative around it, and the boundary
between the two is more porous than you might think, that is both the danger and the excitement of the performance.

In this novel, performance refers not only to the narrator's career as an actress, but also to the performance of life itself. We are all, at every moment, playing a character, both to the world and to ourselves. In different situations and relationships, we play different roles. We are constantly being reframed and reshaped by our externalities. Who then, are we really? Who is anyone?

If you want to question your own existence, pick up this book! If you are looking for plot or for character development, you will not find it here. And that is not a flaw.

I want to start off by saying that I was really excited for this book and was very much hoping to like it. I don't remember how or when I heard about it, but I know that I thought "a fictionalized account of a true story of two sisters (the Trung sisters) in Ancient Vietnam who led a successful revolution against an oppressive colonizing regime? sign me up!"

I think with that prompt, it should not be difficult to craft a good narrative. You have all of the ingredients for an action-packed plot already there for you! That being said, I couldn't write a good novel to save my life, so who am I to judge? (I say as I begin this negative review).

This book disappointed me for several reasons. For starters, the prose was very detached at points. I felt at parts like I was reading nonfiction and in the end it began to feel like a chore to pick it up. There were several instances where the author simply listed the emotions that a character was feeling, instead of using any evocative language or descriptions. When the author did provide emotive descriptions, I was pleasantly surprised and impressed! It wasn't horrible across the board.

The tendency to tell and not show expanded to the world-building as well. In many places, the author told the reader that the Han Chinese regime was oppressive to the Lac Viet people whose lands they had colonized; that they imposed their own customs, their language, their gods, etc. This was rarely, if ever, shown. One of the only scenes which succeeded in illustrating the oppressive nature of this regime involved gratuitous violence committed against a character who only existed as a plot device to depict the cruelty of others. While I appreciated that the author demonstrated that the cruelty of humanity was not the sole province of the Han Chinese, but rather extended to the oppressed people as well, I didn't appreciate how he chose to show it. It is surely possible to portray the cruelty of a regime without denying a character his humanity.

What would have really helped to set the scenes were more depictions of the cultural restrictions placed on Lac Viet society by the Han Chinese. There was one mention of how a specific province/region was academically restricted, but this was not elaborated on in any way. I would like to see how this operated!

The author did do a really great job of describing the battle scenes towards the end of the novel, especially the use of bronze drums as an instrument of war. I tend to dislike battle scenes, but found these ones to be just the right length and have just the right amount of intrigue/strategy to keep me engaged.

A large theme of the novel was the imposition of patriarchal gender norms to Lac Viet society which were foreign to them. I was skeptical going in about a book about female revolutionary heroes written by a man, and I was right about that in the end. This is where my largest issues reside. Early on in the novel, we are told:

Marriage is an institution forced on us by the Han.

Based on this, I assumed that that meant marriage as an institution did not exist in Lac Viet society. This was repeated several times throughout the novel, which made it pretty clear to me that the reader was meant to conclude that marriage did not exist in Lac Viet society.

I found this to be really interesting, so I decided to look online and read more about it. However, whereas various sources did explain that Lac Viet society was matrilineal or matrilocal in nature, marriage did exist. It just wasn't patriarchal; that is, the husband did not become the owner of his wife and their children. Inheritance passed through the mother's side, and women were able to both own land and inherit.

This confused me, as the author was insistent that it was marriage itself that the Han imposed, not just a specific definition of marriage (although this got a bit muddy at parts). This was further compounded by the fact that, at one point, one of the two sisters did marry. In a protest against Han colonialism, they married in a traditional Lac Viet ceremony, wearing traditional Lac Viet wedding garb. Why would a culture in which marriage did not exist as an institution have traditional wedding customs?

Later on, the author seems to backtrack on his statement about marriage, by mentioning that marriage existed in other Lac Viet provinces, just not the one where the Trung sisters were from. In the end, I'm not sure what the author meant to convey on this point, but it made me question the reliability of every thing presented as fact about Lac Viet society in the book.

The author also seemed unable to imagine a matrilineal society not formed around modern gender norms. It was pretty similar to contemporary patriarchal society except that women were sexually promiscuous without (much) judgment, marriage (maybe) didn't exist, and women went into war. When it came to the familial dynamics in the Trung family itself, the father made the decisions about his daughter's lives and very much gave "the man of the house" energy. None of the men acted like they deferred to women for anything, and women weren't taking roles outside of traditionally female ones (cook, housewife) until the Trung sisters began their rebellion.

Nguyen did not seem to consider that attitudes about gender and relations between individuals would be different in a society where women possessed more power and autonomy.

I'm obviously not an expert on Lac Viet society (this having been my first foray into learning about it), but I was excited to read a book set in a matrilineal society and felt cheated. This was further exacerbated by the author's choice to have not one, but two forbidden love plots (which I learned from reading up on the Trung sisters were entirely made up). The idea of the sisters rebelling against their father by choosing to become involved with men he did not approve of really rubbed me the wrong way. I also did not appreciate the scene where a woman gave birth in the middle of a battlefield. Was this really necessary?

I stuck with this book because I wanted to get to the actual revolution bit (which was by far the most interesting part of it, but didn't come about until the last third). I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, which saddens me because it had the potential to be amazing!

A gorgeous puzzle box of a book, which prompts the reader to explore storytelling, fate, meaning, and reality. If you like books and cats, you'll feel right at home. This is a love letter to both (and I loved picking up little easter egg mentions of books that I've loved throughout my life).

This one quote truly sums up the entire book:

Stories that fold into other stories and wander into snippets of lost myths and forgotten tales and yet to be told wonderments that turn back around again into each other.

Morgenstern's mind is truly capable of imagining such boundless beauty! I fear that to explain too much would ruin the experience for anyone, because this book is truly a wonder to watch unfold. The entire time, it felt like I wasn't holding a book, but rather a puzzle that could be unfolded in infinite different ways to form a completely different beautiful picture every time.

This is definitely a book that warrants a reread and I can't wait to see what I missed the first time (and what I will surely miss the time after that and the time after that).

If you want to be reminded of childhood wonder and magical worlds that feel like they're just around the corner, this is certainly the book for you. If you don't? Then you need this book even more.

Strange, isn't it? To love a book. When the words on the pages become so precious that they feel like part of your own history because they are.