“Audition is fundamentally concerned with the judgment of law; with, particularly, our insidious system of mass incarceration, and its distance from a system that gives people the freedom to get to know themselves”
“Audition is not just a radical work in its approach to anti-carceral abolitionism, but in its structure and tone. Its tripartite structure opens with a post-Beckettian fugue giving way to almost social-realist prison misery opening up into truly alien ontologies and social structures”
“Adam’s prose is remarkable throughout but the poetics of this section, a transition point as the characters reject their conditioning and the book releases its droning repetition and peaks in harsh surreality before turning to harsher reality (and then a gentler alien unreality) are downright incredible”
“Audition succeeds so admirably because of its commitment: it takes genre seriously, it takes surreal craft seriously, and it takes radical politics seriously”
“There’s no winking or self-consciousness about its approach. It’s about finding the right shape, finding equilibrium rather than hurtling along due to inertia”
“The book becomes a dichotomy between two systems of justice: one punitive, and one, an alien but more humane system, that allows them choices and freedom to know themselves, to atone, and to grow. The most alarming thing about Audition is that it requires such an alien landscape and ontology to allow them to do so”