Audition (Pip Adam, Giramondo)

Alba, Stanley and Drew are giants, sent out into space for reasons unknown to them, in a spaceship called Audition. As they travel through the universe their bodies continue to expand, squeezing them uncomfortably together and filling the entirety of the largest room on Audition. To keep the spaceship moving, the three giants must speak. If they stay silent their bodies will continue growing. Such is the premise of Aotearoa New Zealand author Pip Adam’s uncanny and astounding, genre–defying novel. In parts sci-fi, absurdist, fabulist, social realist—although all attempts to categorise fall short and do the novel a disservice—this is exciting and inventive writing in the hands of an extraordinary writer. As the three giants speak (a somewhat circular, evolving, Beckettian conversation) they gradually uncover details of a shared past that reveals incarceration, violence and injustice. Audition explores systems of power: Who controls these expanding thoughts and bodies, and can they be reclaimed? Are our bodies, thoughts and our relationships to others and the universe even separate at all? There is a fluidity to the body of the text and the bodies within the text, as Adam pushes boundaries into the peculiar and unconventional. Readers may find themselves equal parts unmoored and floored by this thrilling novel. I haven’t stopped thinking about it.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Deborah Crabtree is a Melbourne-based writer and bookseller. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Category: Reviews