Month: February 2026

Booker shortlist book review #4 – “Audition” by Katie Kitamura

This was my penultimate read of the 2025 Booker shortlist. I finished it over the Christmas holiday but it has taken a while to get my blogging act together so far in 2026. (I have also now completed my final book of the shortlist, Flashlight by Susan Choi, which was long and took me a few weeks to get through). Audition is Katie Kitamura’s fifth novel and she is an established writer and literary figure, earning praise and plaudits from many high profile figures as well as being shortlisted for other prizes. I was familiar with her name but I had not read any of her work before. 

Coming in at just over 200 pages, Audition feels more like a novella than a novel to me. It also has the atmosphere of a dark thriller and an ending which seem s more consistent with the novella format. Set in Manhattan the central character is a successful actress in her middle years who has achieved popular and critical acclaim and lives a settled and comfortable life. She is married to Tomas, a writer, and they live in the city, sharing the sorts of routines and rituals that anyone in a long-term relationship would recognise. They drink a little too much wine and eat a little too much pastry but otherwise their life is relatively unremarkable. Our central character remains unnamed.

Life is easy, that is until one day the actress meets Xavier, a young man who, over a slightly clandestine lunch, claims to be her son. She tells him this is impossible – she was pregnant once, but she had an abortion as it was not the right time for her and Tomas to have a family. Xavier is undeterred in his pursuit, however.

At first, the actress tries to keep her meeting with Xavier secret from Tomas; she did fear that he had spotted her at the initial lunch and that perhaps he might have thought she was having an affair, which would explain an apparent change in his behaviour towards her. But Xavier gradually infiltrates the couple’s life, getting a job supporting the director on the play the actress is working on (where she is alarmed to find how indispensable he makes himself). Furthermore, Tomas also seems to be seduced by Xavier and far from being suspicious, welcomes Xavier into their home, almost at the expense of their own relationship. 

The actress observes all the events with increasing dismay, unable to comprehend or to influence Xavier’s actions and events soon spiral out of her control. 

I found the book quite compelling to read; it moves at a good pace and the characters are interesting, but, I’m afraid for me it was ultimately unconvincing. I disliked the ending, which left too many loose ends and unresolved questions for my taste and I found myself asking what the point of the novel was. 

I would like to read Kitamura’s 2021 novel Intimacies, which was highly acclaimed. Audition it seems to me, has been less well received. I’m slightly surprised it was shortlisted, especially when I look at the books that did not make it. 

A fairly quick and interesting read but not highly rewarding for me.

January travel – Marrakech and Bucharest

I had the great good fortune to add two new places to my list of countries visited last month – Morocco and Romania. It is not usual for me to travel early in the new year, not least because I am usually running around taking kids to university, as well as recovering from the cost of Christmas! But I happened to see an opportunity for a very cheap (and quite short) break in Marrakech and we were invited to a christening in Bucharest. It did mean that this usually rather bleak month passed satisfyingly quickly, and I got through a fair bit of reading whilst travelling. Here are some photos of my trips.

Top row – El Badi Palace

Bottom row (L-R) – restaurant overlooking Jemaa el-Fnaa; Madrasa Ben Youssef; wandering through the souks; Koutoubia mosque at daybreak

Marrakech is a stunning place to visit, with all the senses assaulted at once. January was a great time to go, it was 16-18 degrees and not too crowded. I will definitely return, so much still to see.

Top row – Carturesti Carusel bookshop; Church of Saint Vissarion

Middle row (L-R) – National Museum of the Romanian Peasant; example of domestic art and craft; The Little Paris Museum

Bottom row – Palace of Parliament

Bucharest on the other hand was FREEZING! It’s an interesting place that is still coming out of a very dark period in its history. The Palace of Parliament was built by the former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and appears to be mostly a vanity project he conceived following a visit to North Korea. It is enormous and is said to be the heaviest administrative building in the world. I don’t know how this could be verified but it apparently contains 2.5 million tonnes of marble.

I am always interested to find out about literary connections to places I visit. I’m afraid to say I am not familiar with any Moroccan authors, although I have heard of French Moroccan author Leila Slimani – I think I may have read her novel Adèle (published in English in 2019, the original French is called Dans le jardin de l’ogre and was published in 2014). Mohamed Choukri (1935-2003) is another internationally renowned Moroccan author whose autobiography, For Bread Alone, recounts his early life surrounded by violence and poverty and then his self-education and flowering as a writer. Something else to add to the TBR list!

I was even less familiar with Romanian literature, although I was delighted to visit the beautiful Carturesti Carusel bookshop in Bucharest (coincidentally, this also featured on the January page of my 2026 bookshops of the world calendar!) I bought a copy of Mircea Cartarescu’s 1989 novel Nostalgia, which is said to be a surrealist cult masterpiece. Romanian-French playwright Eugene Ionescu is perhaps the most famous writer to emerge from that country, another surrealist and considered part of the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ school.

I recommend both of these cities for a visit if you have the opportunity. January is the perfect time to visit Marrakech, in my view, but perhaps Bucharest might be better in the spring!

Audiobook review – “Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night” by Sophie Hannah

A couple of weeks ago I caught a debate on Radio 4’s PM programme about whether listening to a book on audio counted as ‘reading’. The conversation was linked to the announcement of 2026 as the National Year of Reading, an initiative launched by Queen Camilla, who has done a great deal of work as a literacy and literature champion, and has been supported by many high level people from across the worlds of culture, media, politics and sport, including Richard Osman, the wonderful Stormzy (just when is he going to get a gong!?), Bridget Phillipson and Theo Walcott. Reading as a pastime continues to hold its own, and audiobooks have recently seen double digit growth in popularity year on year. I stopped being sniffy about audiobooks a very long time ago so was slightly surprised to hear this issue being debated! Whilst I still prefer, on the whole, the feel of a book in my hands and the imaginative freedom it gives me, I definitely would read a lot less were it not for audiobooks. It enables me to enjoy reading whilst doing other things that do not require much intellectual engagement, such as cleaning, running, driving or gardening. I find the combination of the two quite therapeutic as it brings a meditative quality to an otherwise mundane or repetitive task.

I listened to two audiobooks over Christmas, which were perfect candidates for the medium. The first was Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, read brilliantly by the inimitable Hugh Grant. (I re-watched all the Bridget Jones films and Love Actually over the Christmas holiday and found myself loving him all over again!) Anyway, he read A Christmas Carol with aplomb and it was well worth using up one of the credits on my Audible subscription for rather than listening to the free version (perhaps I’ll listen to that one next Christmas). 

My other Christmas audiobook was Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night, the fifth of six Hercule Poirot novels penned by Sophie Hannah, in honour of the great detective and his creator, Agatha Christie. It is the first Sophie Hannah Poirot that I have read and I will definitely seek out the other five as she does a brilliant job of recreating the spirit and character of Poirot, his linguistic quirks, self-regard (well-deserved) and of course his genius wit. This particular novel is set primarily in Norfolk where Poirot and his sidekick, Inspector Edward Catchpool, are summoned by Catchpool’s mother Cynthia. Her close friend Arnold is terminally ill with an unspecified condition which does not appear to hinder him either physically or mentally. A seemingly safe local hospital is identified as the place where Arnold will spend his final days when the time comes, but when a baffling murder of a patient is committed there, Edward’s family is split. His wife, in particular, does not want him to be admitted, fearing that he will be murdered too, and the couple’s two sons, and their wives (who are sisters) are thrown into a bitter conflict at a time when they should be supporting one another.

To make matters worse, Arnold is very keen to be admitted to the hospital as soon as possible; as an amateur sleuth himself he is keen to try and solve the murder, and it is his dying wish that he should assist his hero Hercule Poirot in doing so, hence the summons from Cynthia. Edward seems to have strong negative feelings towards his mother and though the two men agree to the plan, albeit somewhat reluctantly, their goal is to solve the case quickly and to return home to London before Christmas (giving them about a week). A tall order perhaps when the local constabulary have been unable to make any headway, but not of course for Poirot. 

I am not sure why murder and death are such powerful and engaging topics for artistic endeavour, especially when handled with a degree of comedy, but we are endlessly fascinated and entertained. The ongoing popularity of the great master Agatha Christie, attests to this. Sophie Hannah deploys great skills of characterisation, plotting worthy of Christie and dark humour to tell this tale and I enjoyed it very much. As an audiobook, it was a great example of how the medium can work particularly well.

Highly recommended.