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Audition: A Novel
Longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award
“Profoundly anti-carceral, abundantly queer, and weird as f*ck, Audition will lead you to spine-tingling places if you are willing to navigate its corridors.” —Casey Lucas, bad apple
The spaceship Audition is hurtling through the cosmos towards the event horizon. Squashed immobile into its largest room are three Alba, Stanley, and Drew. If they talk, the spaceship keeps moving; if they are silent, they resume growing.
So they talk, and as they do, Alba, Stanley, and Drew recover their shared memory of what has been done to their former selves—experiences of imprisonment, violence, and misrecognition, of disempowerment and underprivilege.
Part science fiction, part social realism, Audition asks what happens when systems of power decide someone takes up too much room, and about how we live with each other’s cruelties, imagine new forms of justice, and transcend the bodies and selves we are given.
“Profoundly anti-carceral, abundantly queer, and weird as f*ck, Audition will lead you to spine-tingling places if you are willing to navigate its corridors.” —Casey Lucas, bad apple
The spaceship Audition is hurtling through the cosmos towards the event horizon. Squashed immobile into its largest room are three Alba, Stanley, and Drew. If they talk, the spaceship keeps moving; if they are silent, they resume growing.
So they talk, and as they do, Alba, Stanley, and Drew recover their shared memory of what has been done to their former selves—experiences of imprisonment, violence, and misrecognition, of disempowerment and underprivilege.
Part science fiction, part social realism, Audition asks what happens when systems of power decide someone takes up too much room, and about how we live with each other’s cruelties, imagine new forms of justice, and transcend the bodies and selves we are given.
227 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 1, 2023
66 people are currently reading
1978 people want to read
About the author
Pip Adam
8 books91 followersPIP ADAM gained an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction from Victoria University in 2007. Her work has appeared in Sport, Glottis, Turbine, Lumiere Reader, Hue & Cry, Landfall and Blackmail Press. Her work has also appeared in publications produced in conjunction with two exhibitions at the Wellington City Art Gallery and her reviews have appeared in Metro. She is currently working toward her PhD Creative Writing at Victoria University. Her PhD project explores how engineers describe the built environment. She is using this research to write stories about our relationships with built forms and the structures that hold them up.
Everything We Hoped For won the NZ Post Best First Book Award in 2011 and is an unusually strong first book, distinguished by an exquisitely crafted surface and barely contained emotional force.
Her writing has been described as:
‘a kind of post-post modern fiction - nothing meta, no irony, no narrative arc, no insights or character transformations - the stories are flatline and searing and real’
- Helen Lehndorf PALMERSTON NORTH LIBRARY.
‘Adam knows how to brew a story to its essence and to infuse an emotional undercurrent that is deeply affecting’
- Paula Green CANVAS, NZ HERALD
Everything We Hoped For won the NZ Post Best First Book Award in 2011 and is an unusually strong first book, distinguished by an exquisitely crafted surface and barely contained emotional force.
Her writing has been described as:
‘a kind of post-post modern fiction - nothing meta, no irony, no narrative arc, no insights or character transformations - the stories are flatline and searing and real’
- Helen Lehndorf PALMERSTON NORTH LIBRARY.
‘Adam knows how to brew a story to its essence and to infuse an emotional undercurrent that is deeply affecting’
- Paula Green CANVAS, NZ HERALD
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 139 reviews
August 3, 2023
Easily the most absurd and bizarre book I've read this year, in the best possible way. I don't wanna go to much into the plot because it really is better experienced blind. The one thing I will say is this book is deliberately and wonderfully Anti-Prison. I say that because I kinda wish I had known that going into the book rather than finding out after the fact as it really colors in a lot of the more confusing elements of the novel.
It's a book you kind of have to expect to be confused by as you're reading. Rather than dissecting each line (which you will want to do as there is some really incredible poetics in here) you have to let the words wash over you. As you progress hindsight from later revelations allow you to understand more of what you read prior, it makes for a really interesting reading experience, unlike most others. It's a novel that expects something from you rather than giving you everything. Compared to everything else I've read this year it was the most demanding read, but never without adequate pay off or in a way that felt daunting.
The book has a lot of fascinating things to say about who gets to take up space, how guilt and shame can be such a burden, how interconnected we all are and how much of a joy and a blessing that it. I think the books focus on noise and sound was an exceptional way to show how we all connect even when we are physically distant. People are constantly talking, hearing, listening and feeling sound throughout the novel. They are constantly noticing the other whether that be a person or a the place they are in. No man (or giant) is an island and this book runs with that theme so well.
🚨MAJOR SPOILERS COMING UP!!! I AM ABOUT TO TALK ABOUT THE ENDING OF THE BOOK, IF YOU WANT TO READ THIS BOOK DO NOT CONTINUE READING!!! 🚨
So the ending, I wanna write about it to kind of get my thoughts out, and if anyone has read this book and is reading this please let me know what you thought because wowza what a bizzare way to finish a novel. It ends with a beautiful joyous queer threesome, written in a kind of poetic abstraction. For me it felt like the perfect way to conclude and overcome Alba's guilt. Shes riddled with guilt for the crime that sent her to prison and the way she dehumanized Stanley. The final moment of sexual joy shows how guilt can be overcome, with forgiveness, with joy, with the full opening up and surrender of oneself to another. I think it was truly beautiful. It also shows that no matter how much Alba tried herself to overcome this feeling the true release comes from entering into community. Guilt, pain, sadness and isolation can be overcome withen partnership, we are social creatures and need others to overcome the darkest parts of ourselves. What a great message and a great way to say it.
It's a book you kind of have to expect to be confused by as you're reading. Rather than dissecting each line (which you will want to do as there is some really incredible poetics in here) you have to let the words wash over you. As you progress hindsight from later revelations allow you to understand more of what you read prior, it makes for a really interesting reading experience, unlike most others. It's a novel that expects something from you rather than giving you everything. Compared to everything else I've read this year it was the most demanding read, but never without adequate pay off or in a way that felt daunting.
The book has a lot of fascinating things to say about who gets to take up space, how guilt and shame can be such a burden, how interconnected we all are and how much of a joy and a blessing that it. I think the books focus on noise and sound was an exceptional way to show how we all connect even when we are physically distant. People are constantly talking, hearing, listening and feeling sound throughout the novel. They are constantly noticing the other whether that be a person or a the place they are in. No man (or giant) is an island and this book runs with that theme so well.
🚨MAJOR SPOILERS COMING UP!!! I AM ABOUT TO TALK ABOUT THE ENDING OF THE BOOK, IF YOU WANT TO READ THIS BOOK DO NOT CONTINUE READING!!! 🚨
So the ending, I wanna write about it to kind of get my thoughts out, and if anyone has read this book and is reading this please let me know what you thought because wowza what a bizzare way to finish a novel. It ends with a beautiful joyous queer threesome, written in a kind of poetic abstraction. For me it felt like the perfect way to conclude and overcome Alba's guilt. Shes riddled with guilt for the crime that sent her to prison and the way she dehumanized Stanley. The final moment of sexual joy shows how guilt can be overcome, with forgiveness, with joy, with the full opening up and surrender of oneself to another. I think it was truly beautiful. It also shows that no matter how much Alba tried herself to overcome this feeling the true release comes from entering into community. Guilt, pain, sadness and isolation can be overcome withen partnership, we are social creatures and need others to overcome the darkest parts of ourselves. What a great message and a great way to say it.
June 20, 2023
Idk what’s going on but i like it
April 25, 2024
My advice when reading Audition is to approach it like you would a magic eye picture, with both light and keen focus, holding the story at a distance and letting it come to you gently. I have never read anything quite like this. Truthful, sad, feverish and obscure, evocative of a place at once familiar and alien; reading it felt like drifting inside a dream. I don’t feel that I can say much more about this remarkable novel, because it truly does defy definition, but I can say with confidence that once you’ve met Alba, Stanley and Drew, they are absolutely impossible to forget.
December 30, 2023
I'm always blown away by Pip Adam's books, both because of how inventive and surprising she is with her prose and narratives, and for how she uses her wild, brilliant experimentations to look dead-on at some of the biggest, hardest problems of our society. In The New Animals it was environmental degradation and plastic waste, in Nothing to See it was addiction, and here it's one of the clearest considerations of prisons and their dehumanising effect on incarcerated people I've read. A masterpiece, and possibly my favourite thing she's ever written, but the truth is that I think that after every book of hers I've read.
November 16, 2023
A confusing and bizzare read. I get what the author was trying to convey and certain parts were beautifully written, but mostly I struggled to focus and figure out what on earth (and in space) was going on; it definitely raised more questions than answers.
March 27, 2024
It is unusual to come across a novel that feels truly different to everything else you have read before, but that is how I would describe this wonderful flight of imagination. While I am no expert in what might be called science fiction, it would be wrong to place such a label on this book simply because some of it takes place outside of the earth’s gravitational field. This novel is so much more.
There is so much to unpick here that it is hard to know where to start. Perhaps in the Acknowledgements, where Pip Adam spells out one of the major themes of the book, in particular the prison system and the punishment-based justice system. She has worked alongside prison inmates, using writing as a way to help them unlock their past and move them forwards.
The novel is the story if three characters; Alba, Stanley and Drew, who we initially encounter trapped within a spaceship in which they are constantly growing so that they no longer fit comfortably and are squashed into spaces from which they are unable to move. The spaceship on which they are trapped is called Audition.
The three characters – three giants – about which we know very little. The novel really comes alive once we step into their backstory. When we learn that they were all once normal sized, and that two of them met while they were in prison. The third was a victim of crime. We never understand why one day they simply began to grow, but the response of the other people on earth was to imprison them and then finally to launch them out into space on flights destined never to return. The more of the backstory that we learn the more everything from the earlier chapters begins to make sense. Fear of the huge giants within the population leads to them being placed on a special programme in special schools. Hundreds are re-educated, happy to perform simple tasks and lead the way towards a new life. But they are sent with no hope of return.
This piece of description is by Torren, the normal sized teacher to the three main giant characters. She describes the moments as they stride towards the spaceship to depart the earth:
Our three characters arrive at a new planet and experience a whole new range of sensations and senses. Things are talking to them without words. All the time we are trying to make sense of what is happening to them, why they have been sent ahead and why they have been tricked. At some point this new world is attacked and the planet softly repulses the attack without force. Do they feel at home in this new way of being?
If you really want to read something different this year then please give this a try. You won’t regret it.
There is so much to unpick here that it is hard to know where to start. Perhaps in the Acknowledgements, where Pip Adam spells out one of the major themes of the book, in particular the prison system and the punishment-based justice system. She has worked alongside prison inmates, using writing as a way to help them unlock their past and move them forwards.
The novel is the story if three characters; Alba, Stanley and Drew, who we initially encounter trapped within a spaceship in which they are constantly growing so that they no longer fit comfortably and are squashed into spaces from which they are unable to move. The spaceship on which they are trapped is called Audition.
The three characters – three giants – about which we know very little. The novel really comes alive once we step into their backstory. When we learn that they were all once normal sized, and that two of them met while they were in prison. The third was a victim of crime. We never understand why one day they simply began to grow, but the response of the other people on earth was to imprison them and then finally to launch them out into space on flights destined never to return. The more of the backstory that we learn the more everything from the earlier chapters begins to make sense. Fear of the huge giants within the population leads to them being placed on a special programme in special schools. Hundreds are re-educated, happy to perform simple tasks and lead the way towards a new life. But they are sent with no hope of return.
This piece of description is by Torren, the normal sized teacher to the three main giant characters. She describes the moments as they stride towards the spaceship to depart the earth:
They were walking slower than they could that was for sure. She watched them, the three of them, the three she was taking. There were hundreds of others, but these were the three she was responsible for – three of them equals one of her. She watched them. Looking about. Trying to get some kind of sense of the place to take with them. She tried to feel it. This goodbye. They weren’t telling them much but they were definitely not telling them that they weren’t coming home. Alba kept looking behind her, like she expected to see the past. Like she had a hope that maybe it had been some kind of mistake, that maybe she wasn’t that tall. That maybe she had stayed the same size, that she was just going back to work, on the bus, complaining about the way the giants were being rewarded. But then she would look down at the ground, so far away, and realise they were right and there was no hiding it. She was going and not coming back. So, she looked up, to remember the sky maybe. The irony was painful. She’d have all the sky she wanted once she was up there but for now she wanted to try and feel the sky so she could remember it.
Our three characters arrive at a new planet and experience a whole new range of sensations and senses. Things are talking to them without words. All the time we are trying to make sense of what is happening to them, why they have been sent ahead and why they have been tricked. At some point this new world is attacked and the planet softly repulses the attack without force. Do they feel at home in this new way of being?
Alba searches around her body and there is not an ounce of homesickness. She misses nothing. She was born into the world and it was not happy to see her. This isn’t her home. She doesn’t want to take advantage or be any more of a burden than she already is here. They hadn’t asked her to come, she hadn’t asked to be there. It isn’t a welcome – it’s an extremely advanced form of attack and defence.
If you really want to read something different this year then please give this a try. You won’t regret it.
March 15, 2024
My favourite Pip Adam so far! Strange and sad, but also comforting and intimate.
Read
December 7, 2023ever expanding and very strange and good. hard to keep myself fully submerged, but not in an unwelcome way, just in the way that writing this surreal keeps you a little distant. i have only read about prison abolition in one distinct nonfiction manner and this was a new and open window, that seems full of possibility
May 9, 2024
This book is fucking wild. In the best possible way. I loved it. It’s weird-af but also not all that weird at the same time. Simple sentences working hard. Faith in the reader. Love from the writer. It’s actually all here very clearly, just sitting behind veils as always.
October 18, 2023
I love everything Pip Adam writes. I have no idea what the hell is going on, but I love it.
March 2, 2025
Have I read the best book of the month on March 1st?!
Oh what a truly brilliant book.
A dear friend recommended this story to me and I have never been more thankful. Audition is a masterpiece, one that isn't just smart and beautifully written but also unsettling, funny, deeply emotional, and somehow full of plot twist?
The journey Audition takes you on is one of discomfort. Every time you think you've figured out what's going on and what it is about, it pulls the rug from under you and reinvents itself so that you see the characters and their story in a whole new light. It blew my mind so many times I had to put the book down to reconsider everything I thought it was and still, I surely haven't fully grasped it all.
That will come after a second or third reading, if I'm lucky.
I simply cannot wait to get a physical copy so I can take notes and highlight stuff.
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada (Adult) | Strange Light for the opportunity to read this ARC. The Canadian edition of this book comes out in June 2025.
Oh what a truly brilliant book.
A dear friend recommended this story to me and I have never been more thankful. Audition is a masterpiece, one that isn't just smart and beautifully written but also unsettling, funny, deeply emotional, and somehow full of plot twist?
The journey Audition takes you on is one of discomfort. Every time you think you've figured out what's going on and what it is about, it pulls the rug from under you and reinvents itself so that you see the characters and their story in a whole new light. It blew my mind so many times I had to put the book down to reconsider everything I thought it was and still, I surely haven't fully grasped it all.
That will come after a second or third reading, if I'm lucky.
I simply cannot wait to get a physical copy so I can take notes and highlight stuff.
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada (Adult) | Strange Light for the opportunity to read this ARC. The Canadian edition of this book comes out in June 2025.
July 14, 2024
Pip Adam is a New Zealand author who is now published in Australia by Giramondo Publishing — an excellent arrangement which allows Australians easy access to her ambitious and thought-provoking books.
She is also one of the most exciting contemporary authors there is.
I've just been re-reading my review of the first of her books that I've read. It's called The New Animals (2017), and in the light of her preoccupations in Audition, this paragraph about Doug, a pit-bull terrier used for a photo-shoot, is prescient:
Audition is about how the justice system fails both the people who are incarcerated and the people outside who want to feel safe. In the press release from Giramondo, the author note says that it's an argument for the abolition of prisons and our present punishment-based justice system. Pip Adam explains more about it in this article at Stuff.
It is years since I did HSC Legal Studies and learned about the four purposes of the justice system: protection for society; deterrence; rehabilitation; and reparation, and how only the first of these purposes is effective — and that's only for as long as the perpetrator is locked up. Times have changed since then, and now there are said to be more 'purposes', with retribution given high priority. (The Australian Law Reform Commission has a useful summary here,) But still, we know from research that criminals come out of gaol cleverer at crime than they were; that 'deterrence' has no effect on crimes of passion or loss of impulse control; that what passes for rehabilitation programs doesn't prevent recidivism; and that no conceivable reparation can make up for the most heinous of crimes. We know that 'getting tough on crime' doesn't reduce crime. None of these realities affect the Law-and-Order auctions that are a feature of state elections.
But you know, when you've been a victim of violent crime, it can be a struggle to remember the research and be reasonable. Sometimes it's a moral struggle and sometimes, you simply feel a visceral response.
Plus, we know that there are some people who really are an ongoing danger to society...
So Audition made me feel ambivalent about its preoccupations even before I started reading it.
In the Stuff interview, Pip Adam gave this response to a question about how she pitched the book:
Yes, Audition begins with three giants who are squeezed into a spacecraft. They have to keep talking to keep the spacecraft moving, and silence makes them increase in size, a danger to themselves and each other. The effect was so powerful I had to conquer my claustrophobia to read it. Seriously. Confined spaces, even fictional ones, give me vivid nightmares.
Truth be told, though I do understand why Audition was written as a space opera, I did not really get on with the spacecraft elements. But Audition is a brilliant book all the same. It's what the giants talk about that makes it a brilliant book.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/07/16/a...
She is also one of the most exciting contemporary authors there is.
I've just been re-reading my review of the first of her books that I've read. It's called The New Animals (2017), and in the light of her preoccupations in Audition, this paragraph about Doug, a pit-bull terrier used for a photo-shoot, is prescient:
Doug represents all the people who are used, and tossed away afterwards, and who fight back with violence because life makes them indifferent to human affection and careless about the property of others. It’s a very confronting image which will stay with me for a long time.
Audition is about how the justice system fails both the people who are incarcerated and the people outside who want to feel safe. In the press release from Giramondo, the author note says that it's an argument for the abolition of prisons and our present punishment-based justice system. Pip Adam explains more about it in this article at Stuff.
It is years since I did HSC Legal Studies and learned about the four purposes of the justice system: protection for society; deterrence; rehabilitation; and reparation, and how only the first of these purposes is effective — and that's only for as long as the perpetrator is locked up. Times have changed since then, and now there are said to be more 'purposes', with retribution given high priority. (The Australian Law Reform Commission has a useful summary here,) But still, we know from research that criminals come out of gaol cleverer at crime than they were; that 'deterrence' has no effect on crimes of passion or loss of impulse control; that what passes for rehabilitation programs doesn't prevent recidivism; and that no conceivable reparation can make up for the most heinous of crimes. We know that 'getting tough on crime' doesn't reduce crime. None of these realities affect the Law-and-Order auctions that are a feature of state elections.
But you know, when you've been a victim of violent crime, it can be a struggle to remember the research and be reasonable. Sometimes it's a moral struggle and sometimes, you simply feel a visceral response.
Plus, we know that there are some people who really are an ongoing danger to society...
So Audition made me feel ambivalent about its preoccupations even before I started reading it.
***
In the Stuff interview, Pip Adam gave this response to a question about how she pitched the book:
When I’m asked to talk about this book, I often find it easier to talk about the ideas behind it rather than the machinery of the book itself. The book is largely an essay or a thought experiment that explores alternative forms of justice. In order to do this, I believe I needed to create a new or alternate world. If I tried to imagine alternatives in a world that resembles this one too much I would have found it too hard to escape the entrenched power structures. I also think I probably mentioned it was about giants and a spacecraft.
Yes, Audition begins with three giants who are squeezed into a spacecraft. They have to keep talking to keep the spacecraft moving, and silence makes them increase in size, a danger to themselves and each other. The effect was so powerful I had to conquer my claustrophobia to read it. Seriously. Confined spaces, even fictional ones, give me vivid nightmares.
Truth be told, though I do understand why Audition was written as a space opera, I did not really get on with the spacecraft elements. But Audition is a brilliant book all the same. It's what the giants talk about that makes it a brilliant book.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/07/16/a...
May 28, 2025
I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.
A harrowing and complex, Audition utilizes its strangeness as a scathing take-down of the prison system.
Note: if sexual violence/coercion is troubling to you, there is mention of it in this book, so just a warning.
This book is absolutely weird but in a good way. It has three sections, each varying in levels of bizarre. The first section is the strangest because we’re given absolutely no context for what is going on, and everything is told in dialogue. There’s no description, just a conversation between three people. Then follows the easier section, although it is abyssmally bleak, and then the third is bonkers again but in a different way. I won’t explain too much about this, as it’s more interesting to go into it not knowing anything. I’ll try to keep everyting vague, at least respecting plot and character development.
If you don’t like books that are deliberately trying to keep you at least slightly confused, you won’t enjoy it. But if you like stuff that is a little out there, that is more concept than story, you will enjoy this. It’s deeply intellectual and interesting in the sense that you know there’s a point and you want to get to it. It’s not that hard to understand, in terms of following what is going on, but WHY the characters are where they are and HOW they become such is what is deliberately withheld from us.
The characters are deliberately not-deep. They aren’t flat, in that they are backing personality or purpose, but I took them as representing different facets of victimization within society, as well as how society, rather than dealing with problems, attempts to get rid of them, to foist them off somewhere out of sight. The book is an argument, not really a story, to be clear.
The book raises some really interesting questions, with its primary argument being that prison is a dehumanizing place that does nothing but to actually solve the problem of criminality or injustice. I agree with this and could go on and on about my opinions on prison reform and how I agree that prisons do nothing in terms of deterrence or rehabilitation, but I will desist.
The book, while it makes an excellent case, doesn’t really address the issue of what the alternative could be that still provides victims with a sense of justice being served. Perhaps it does a little, but not in a way that I found entirely satisfactory.
Yet, one novel isn't going to solve the systemic justice problems in our society, but it does show how interesting, thoughtful, and challenging the book is. If you have any interest in these topics, you should check it out.
A harrowing and complex, Audition utilizes its strangeness as a scathing take-down of the prison system.
Note: if sexual violence/coercion is troubling to you, there is mention of it in this book, so just a warning.
This book is absolutely weird but in a good way. It has three sections, each varying in levels of bizarre. The first section is the strangest because we’re given absolutely no context for what is going on, and everything is told in dialogue. There’s no description, just a conversation between three people. Then follows the easier section, although it is abyssmally bleak, and then the third is bonkers again but in a different way. I won’t explain too much about this, as it’s more interesting to go into it not knowing anything. I’ll try to keep everyting vague, at least respecting plot and character development.
If you don’t like books that are deliberately trying to keep you at least slightly confused, you won’t enjoy it. But if you like stuff that is a little out there, that is more concept than story, you will enjoy this. It’s deeply intellectual and interesting in the sense that you know there’s a point and you want to get to it. It’s not that hard to understand, in terms of following what is going on, but WHY the characters are where they are and HOW they become such is what is deliberately withheld from us.
The characters are deliberately not-deep. They aren’t flat, in that they are backing personality or purpose, but I took them as representing different facets of victimization within society, as well as how society, rather than dealing with problems, attempts to get rid of them, to foist them off somewhere out of sight. The book is an argument, not really a story, to be clear.
The book raises some really interesting questions, with its primary argument being that prison is a dehumanizing place that does nothing but to actually solve the problem of criminality or injustice. I agree with this and could go on and on about my opinions on prison reform and how I agree that prisons do nothing in terms of deterrence or rehabilitation, but I will desist.
The book, while it makes an excellent case, doesn’t really address the issue of what the alternative could be that still provides victims with a sense of justice being served. Perhaps it does a little, but not in a way that I found entirely satisfactory.
Yet, one novel isn't going to solve the systemic justice problems in our society, but it does show how interesting, thoughtful, and challenging the book is. If you have any interest in these topics, you should check it out.
Read
June 4, 2025Thanks to the publisher for the gifted arc
I know this is only my second novel by Adam, but if I had to describe her style I would say to expect a mix of realism, absurdism, and social critique and just know you’ll be taken to unexpected places. The book you start isn’t the one you’re going to finish; just trust her.
The blurb on the back of the book pretty much covers the first 60 pages, three “giants” are in a spaceship called Audition. They must keep talking to keep the ship moving, if they stop they continue to grow and push against the ship’s walls. I wish I had an audiobook to experience this part, as the characters talk over each other in what sometimes seems like a circular conversation. You honestly don’t know what they’re talking about most of the time as they flip flop on things, and it almost seems like the book is going to be this impenetrable thing, but, slowly, what they say becomes clearer and more chilling.
We eventually see how the characters ended up on this ship, but I don’t want to say too much about the plot - I rather you experience it for yourself. What I will say is when I finally realized what Adam was doing (and I’ll totally admit not getting it all on first read, there’s a rom-com aspect that went over my head) I was immediately sucked in and my head may have exploded. Then my brain melted towards the end because things got so trippy (in a good way!) -are we at an event horizon? The way out is through 😭
The book starts off as sci-fi or spec fic, but it turns into an abolitionist book that shows us not just the physical prisons we have in society but the structures created to uphold them- what I mean is the emotional, mental, economical, even linguistic prisons that dehumanize every day and force us into jobs, situations, even genders we don't want. It then, thankfully, ends on a note of hope, not the saccharine forced kind but actual, open hearted possibilities when you have the chance of true reform.
Audition not only made me think about confinement, but it made me empathize with characters that are violent perpetrators. Ironically moving them to space allowed me to see their humanity.
I know this is only my second novel by Adam, but if I had to describe her style I would say to expect a mix of realism, absurdism, and social critique and just know you’ll be taken to unexpected places. The book you start isn’t the one you’re going to finish; just trust her.
The blurb on the back of the book pretty much covers the first 60 pages, three “giants” are in a spaceship called Audition. They must keep talking to keep the ship moving, if they stop they continue to grow and push against the ship’s walls. I wish I had an audiobook to experience this part, as the characters talk over each other in what sometimes seems like a circular conversation. You honestly don’t know what they’re talking about most of the time as they flip flop on things, and it almost seems like the book is going to be this impenetrable thing, but, slowly, what they say becomes clearer and more chilling.
We eventually see how the characters ended up on this ship, but I don’t want to say too much about the plot - I rather you experience it for yourself. What I will say is when I finally realized what Adam was doing (and I’ll totally admit not getting it all on first read, there’s a rom-com aspect that went over my head) I was immediately sucked in and my head may have exploded. Then my brain melted towards the end because things got so trippy (in a good way!) -are we at an event horizon? The way out is through 😭
The book starts off as sci-fi or spec fic, but it turns into an abolitionist book that shows us not just the physical prisons we have in society but the structures created to uphold them- what I mean is the emotional, mental, economical, even linguistic prisons that dehumanize every day and force us into jobs, situations, even genders we don't want. It then, thankfully, ends on a note of hope, not the saccharine forced kind but actual, open hearted possibilities when you have the chance of true reform.
Audition not only made me think about confinement, but it made me empathize with characters that are violent perpetrators. Ironically moving them to space allowed me to see their humanity.
April 19, 2024
I tried to get my head around this book, but after renewing it once, I had to admit defeat. I might try again one day
Read
July 29, 2023I won’t rate this book because I think any rating would undermine the reading experience.
There were moments in here where I struggled to pay attention; I felt my mind drift off and think about work, think about the other people on the train, think about the cold or the warmth, or the feel of the cover in my hands. I love the cover. I love the colours and I love the gloss of it. There were moments when I held myself back from crying (on the train). There were moments when I cried (in my house). I’ve folded many pages of this book. I am going to list some sentences:
‘Alba sees that this is how they would be the most dangerous. By trying to use what they had brought from Earth, here. Every time they try the old ways they choke and panic and it endangers everyone else.’ (pg. 196)
‘It’s a strange feeling to know that they will never have to explain this to any of their kind. They will never return. They had been sent to die. That’s clear now. Maybe they had been sent to take over this world, as some kind of front guard or maybe no one that sent them could imagine this. But they are lost to their own world now. They don’t belong where they have have come from and they don’t belong here. They are the only ones of their kind who will make it.’ (pg. 198)
‘“Does it rain?” Drew says.
“I guess we’ll find out,” Alba says. But it’s more complicated than that. If they stay one hundred years, say, and it never rains and then they die and the next day it rains, does it rain here?’ (pg. 215)
’The order of things on Earth they left was completely unreal. What she had done is true. She looks at the scars on Drew’s face. Nothing that can be paid would make it better. Not money or property. Not even Alba’s death. Not an eye for an eye. Only responsibility. Only carrying on.’ (pg. 216)
Pip Adam is a masterful writer. This novel is given ample space to flesh out the stretch of time, and thought, and pensivity, in ways that previous novels from Adam that were grounded in harsh reality were unable to do.
This isn’t to say that this book is not grounded in harsh reality. Audition is the be all end of all of absurdist reality. In the opening lines of Adam’s acknowledgements, there is the explicit relation of this book to prison abolition, and the prison system is profoundly absurd. Corporal punishment is completely absurd. The putting away of peoples into cells far away from bus lines and trains is manifestly absurd. It is unjust, yes, but it is also ridiculous. How does this work. How is this effective. Corralled like farm animals into small spaces to feed off of each other’s anxiety and history and stress. Doing the laundry. Going to anger management courses. Learning math, coding, and quilt making. What does this do?
Alba finds Stanley, and the connection they build is brilliant and fantastic, and ripped apart by the seams anyway. Drew gives an impact statement, and the two of them are still connected by the rope of scars on Drew’s face, put there by Alba beating her to an inch of death. Stanley is cool, and handsome, and is protected away from Alba, who is nothing in prison, who has no power. What is power? What is the lack of power? The three of them are connected by their mammoth growth, giants in this world; is this power? When they are conditioned, when they are told they are nothing and stupid and let into the kitchens to eat ice cream like they are winning something, is this power?
I have learnt to just keep saying ‘yes’ when I read anything by Pip Adam. At the end, it will all have been worth it. The manipulation of what is and isn’t literature is explicit and controlled and fantastical and fanatical. At the end, I can turn the page and know that it was worth it.
There were moments in here where I struggled to pay attention; I felt my mind drift off and think about work, think about the other people on the train, think about the cold or the warmth, or the feel of the cover in my hands. I love the cover. I love the colours and I love the gloss of it. There were moments when I held myself back from crying (on the train). There were moments when I cried (in my house). I’ve folded many pages of this book. I am going to list some sentences:
‘Alba sees that this is how they would be the most dangerous. By trying to use what they had brought from Earth, here. Every time they try the old ways they choke and panic and it endangers everyone else.’ (pg. 196)
‘It’s a strange feeling to know that they will never have to explain this to any of their kind. They will never return. They had been sent to die. That’s clear now. Maybe they had been sent to take over this world, as some kind of front guard or maybe no one that sent them could imagine this. But they are lost to their own world now. They don’t belong where they have have come from and they don’t belong here. They are the only ones of their kind who will make it.’ (pg. 198)
‘“Does it rain?” Drew says.
“I guess we’ll find out,” Alba says. But it’s more complicated than that. If they stay one hundred years, say, and it never rains and then they die and the next day it rains, does it rain here?’ (pg. 215)
’The order of things on Earth they left was completely unreal. What she had done is true. She looks at the scars on Drew’s face. Nothing that can be paid would make it better. Not money or property. Not even Alba’s death. Not an eye for an eye. Only responsibility. Only carrying on.’ (pg. 216)
Pip Adam is a masterful writer. This novel is given ample space to flesh out the stretch of time, and thought, and pensivity, in ways that previous novels from Adam that were grounded in harsh reality were unable to do.
This isn’t to say that this book is not grounded in harsh reality. Audition is the be all end of all of absurdist reality. In the opening lines of Adam’s acknowledgements, there is the explicit relation of this book to prison abolition, and the prison system is profoundly absurd. Corporal punishment is completely absurd. The putting away of peoples into cells far away from bus lines and trains is manifestly absurd. It is unjust, yes, but it is also ridiculous. How does this work. How is this effective. Corralled like farm animals into small spaces to feed off of each other’s anxiety and history and stress. Doing the laundry. Going to anger management courses. Learning math, coding, and quilt making. What does this do?
Alba finds Stanley, and the connection they build is brilliant and fantastic, and ripped apart by the seams anyway. Drew gives an impact statement, and the two of them are still connected by the rope of scars on Drew’s face, put there by Alba beating her to an inch of death. Stanley is cool, and handsome, and is protected away from Alba, who is nothing in prison, who has no power. What is power? What is the lack of power? The three of them are connected by their mammoth growth, giants in this world; is this power? When they are conditioned, when they are told they are nothing and stupid and let into the kitchens to eat ice cream like they are winning something, is this power?
I have learnt to just keep saying ‘yes’ when I read anything by Pip Adam. At the end, it will all have been worth it. The manipulation of what is and isn’t literature is explicit and controlled and fantastical and fanatical. At the end, I can turn the page and know that it was worth it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 12, 2025
This was such a beautiful, thought-provoking book. The slow reveal of information, the looming dread and darkness, the unexpected turn of the story... Truly delightful, experimental sci-fi.
As someone who has gone through intense physical changes and also had to learn to allow myself to emotionally take up more space, I related to the characters. It was also not lost on me that all of our main characters were AFAB, and I think that was intentional on the author's part.
While I understood the narrative purpose of sex in the story (as violence, as vulnerability, as a metaphor for joy, as an act of intimacy and community), I was not expecting it and it's outside of my comfort zone to read, hence the lower rating.
I'll be thinking about this book for a long time.
CW: violence, coercion, abuse. A main character is a transman and experiences violence and transphobia. There are multiple allusions to sex, including an on-page rape and a semi-described threesome. Language including f-words and the c-word.
As someone who has gone through intense physical changes and also had to learn to allow myself to emotionally take up more space, I related to the characters. It was also not lost on me that all of our main characters were AFAB, and I think that was intentional on the author's part.
While I understood the narrative purpose of sex in the story (as violence, as vulnerability, as a metaphor for joy, as an act of intimacy and community), I was not expecting it and it's outside of my comfort zone to read, hence the lower rating.
I'll be thinking about this book for a long time.
CW: violence, coercion, abuse. A main character is a transman and experiences violence and transphobia. There are multiple allusions to sex, including an on-page rape and a semi-described threesome. Language including f-words and the c-word.
June 5, 2024
4.5* rounded up to 5. Banger. Captivating in its brilliantly imaginative premise and unconventional form. The last bit lost me, but it felt like it was supposed to just wash over you.
July 3, 2025
Video review https://youtu.be/tON8oEFT59g
May 15, 2024
i think im too stupid to undertand this properly but it was very love death + robots
October 30, 2024
Proper review tk maybe if I can gather my potential criticisms ... Undeniably captivating & original... Inhaled over a sick day
July 28, 2024
A very strange read. Just as I got to grips with the first part, it jumped to reality, and just as I came to terms with reality it pulls you out into the abstract. It’s tough to ever get comfortable sitting in the moment and understanding the metaphor.
It was hard to tell whether this was a scathing critique of our criminal justice system, or a sadistic exploration of how we could punish people deemed “too big” for society. Either way it didn’t seem interested in rehabilitation.
I think it was lost on me
It was hard to tell whether this was a scathing critique of our criminal justice system, or a sadistic exploration of how we could punish people deemed “too big” for society. Either way it didn’t seem interested in rehabilitation.
I think it was lost on me
August 21, 2025
The longer I think about this the more I like it
July 10, 2024
I love this strange book. Part 1 is a confusing slog but I think it works super well. I read this straight after God of Small Things so I was onboard with a confusing narrative at that point.
It's dissection (and disgust) of prison is done well. It's strong- it makes you mad and sad.
The connections between characters was beautiful, it was a story of loneliness and comfort and connection. I think overall it's an uplifting story, it sits in the idea that people can be good.
I think the foundational plot point is compelling. After this I had a dream where I couldn't stop growing. I was so big I fell off my bed. I think this idea will stick with me. That the sign of a good read🫡
It's dissection (and disgust) of prison is done well. It's strong- it makes you mad and sad.
The connections between characters was beautiful, it was a story of loneliness and comfort and connection. I think overall it's an uplifting story, it sits in the idea that people can be good.
I think the foundational plot point is compelling. After this I had a dream where I couldn't stop growing. I was so big I fell off my bed. I think this idea will stick with me. That the sign of a good read🫡
Read
September 30, 2025I don’t even know what to rate this book because I still don’t think I understood it.
April 13, 2024
So so weird. But it did some cool things.
December 23, 2025
Definitely worth the read just for the final part. Have you read anything from New Zealand? If not, grab this one. I plan to read her other books soon
March 24, 2024
One of the most challenging books I’ve read in years, Audition is consuming and meandering but also incredibly moving. Though much of it was lost on me, Pip Adam’s writing style feels so inventive and creative. The social commentary on our broken justice system and strong anti prison stance is portrayed by three giants outcast from earth, passing through an alternative reality, a claustrophobic spaceship and a foreign planet. I’ll need to sit on this for a while.
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