MixedBrooklyn RailKitamura is constantly assembling and then scattering evidence of what\'s true and what’s a performance ... Kitamura’s readers will recognize the characteristic cool, quiet intensity of her prose, and her interest in the power dynamics of intimate relationships. What sets Audition apart is its improvisational nature ... A startling and unnerving examination of the parts we play ... Readers are offered few definitive answers about what happens between these main characters, and who they really are to one another ... The story’s uneasy resolution, align with the novel’s architecture, but in the end offer no emotional core for readers to hold onto as it all fades to black.
PositiveThe Brooklyn RailBy design, none of these characters is worth rooting for. Were the novel longer than 176 pages, that void would become tiresome ... With Universality, Brown has cemented herself as a writer who separates text from subtext with devastating clarity.
Rita Bullwinkel
RaveBrooklyn RailBullwinkel makes surprising and shrewd connections between the world of this one tournament and the other hidden worlds that girls build in plain sight ... A fearless and faithful rendering of what it’s like to inhabit the secret world of girls—the disorientation, the violence, the delusions of grandeur, the simultaneous intimacy with and alienation from one another—through the eyes of eight competitors at the very edge of girlhood, playing the last hand-clapping game of their lives.
