Audition by Katie Kitamura

I put this on my library hold list because it was longlisted for the Booker Prize, but I also would have been intrigued because the other book by her that I have read is Intimacies, which tells the story of an interpreter at the Hague who comes to feel that she is the mouth piece for a war criminal that she is interpreting for. in this one, an aging an actress is confronted by a young man who claims to be her son, and though this cannot possibly be the case or can it, we never quite can figure it out. She invites him to live with her and her husband in their apartment as their child, which is bit shocking. If it were my child I would help them with the rend some place, not put them under my roof. But then we wouldn't have the crucial irritant to work with in the story. What could go wrong? Just about everything. These narrators take the most dramatic events in stride and devote most of their attention to minute observation of the people around them, noting the smallest gestures and contemplating their possible meanings. They are not given to outbursts of emotion, and in conversation they tend to listen more than talk. This leaves room for the reader to internally reflect as well, and the result for me was intense and a little startling.