Halfway through this book, I decided that it was pretentious nonsense but, by the end, I’m not so sure. Okay, it is pretentious but there is also something perceptive in there!

The story starts with an actress who meets a strange young man in a café in Manhattan who asserts that he could be her son – although that is not possible. His name is Xavier and as the story develops he becomes more and more involved in the life of the actress and her husband Tomas. That is Part One!

In Part Two, the story shifts gear and Xavier is now, apparently, the son of Tomas and the actress. Along the way, he moves back into his old room and invites a possible girlfriend, Hannah, to stay in the house as well. Gradually, these two people take over the house and the lives of the actress and Tomas. Events become weirder and more hallucinatory.

As a story, a slim plot anyway, this is at best surreal or, at worst, bonkers. Kitamura’s prose anyway has a habit of describing everything three ways – so Tomas lowers himself into a chair, eases the weight from his feet and relaxes against the cushions – which draws out what already seems to be becoming a waste of time for the reader, who feels entitled to character development rather than nonsensical reversals!

So, what’s it all about? Perhaps, the title gives it away, in the sense that an audition comes with improvisation and explorations of meaning and relationships before becoming perfectly formed on the stage. Seen like that, the novel is made up of the explorations and improvisations which actors perform to find meaning in a script. If that is the case and we see Xavier presented three ways then, perhaps, that makes sense. However, I’m not sure that these different perceptions add up to a more rounded picture!

Kitamura’s language and a slow cinematic focus on detail and describing the mundane is much admired but I think Sally Rooney does it better, although much might be lost in translation. It certainly doesn’t make for an easy read – even if the shortness of the novel might help with that!

Should it win the Booker Prize? Probably, not. The pretentious aspects of the novel, the sense that not everybody will understand the post-structural toying with the social construction of reality, and its slow unfolding holds it back. You can see this reflected in Amazon reviews. While 25% are 5*, 43% are 3* or less. In the end, the readers who describe it as pointless and confusing do have a point!