In July I wrote about what I thought was the best book of 2025 so far: Audition, by Katie Kitamura. I adored that book and still do. It’s mind-bending and touching. It’s dramatic in an understated way.
But I received some pushback from a friend, one of the most avid readers I know, who didn’t think the book was all that. I can see how the unusual structure and fundamental strangeness of Audition might turn some people off. He said that Kitamura’s previous novel, Intimacies, published in 2021, is known for being the book people like if they didn’t care for Audition. So I read Intimacies to see what might be meant by that. (I believe my friend was going to read it, too, but I haven’t yet gotten his reaction.)
What is Intimacies about?
A woman is hired to be a translator at The Hague. Everything in her life feels unsettled. Her job is temporary, a sort of trial run to see how she does. Plus, the job, in requiring her to translate for some of the most heinous human rights offenders in the world, is unsettling in itself. She has lived all over the world and isn’t sure where home is. She has a boyfriend, but their relationship feels impermanent and on edge. She seems to be searching for a close friend or friend group. Even the apartment she’s renting is temporary, with the lease expiring soon.
In the first chapter, the protagonist goes to a friend’s new apartment for dinner. The friend, who had formerly displayed confidence about her choice of neighborhood, suddenly seems less certain:
“The sirens cut out and we sat in the sudden silence. A siren can mean anything, I said at last. A slip in the bath, a heart attack in the kitchen. She nodded and I realized her apprehension was not caused by the threat of danger or violence, or not that alone—it was that her sense of the apartment had mutated. In that moment, it was no longer a source of the security she had long sought but something else altogether, something more changeable, and uncertain.”
Isn’t Kitamura’s language beautiful in that passage? It’s smooth and precise, yet emotionally deep.
The novel is about the different forms of intimacy we have with other people in our lives, and the search for the right sort of intimacy, the sort that feels acceptably comfortable in an unsettled and unsettling world.
How is Intimacies different from Audition?
Intimacies is a straightforward novel. The author plays no tricks on the reader, as she does in Audition. If you read Audition and thought it a bit too avant-garde for your taste, give Intimacies a try. Intimacies won’t leave you feeling as if you don’t get it, as if there’s an analytical puzzle you haven’t cracked. It will leave you with a profound sense of “Yes, that’s how it is in life sometimes.”
Highly recommended. Incidentally, if you’re in the DC area, you can meet Katie Kitamura at the National Book Festival this Saturday, September 6. She and Susan Choi will be interviewed by Angie Kim. Details about the interview are here and details about Kitamura’s book signing afterward are here.
Have you ever felt deeply unsettled in your life? How was it resolved—or has it not yet been resolved?
Featured in this post: Intimacies by Katie Kitamura Buy it now
Also mentioned: Audition by Katie Kitamura Buy it now
