Apartment
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4.1 • 51 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Editors Choice
Longlisted for the 2020 Simpson / Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize
One of Vogue.com's "Best Books of 2020 So Far"
One of Elle's "Best Books of 2020 So Far"
Named A Most-Anticipated Book by The New York Times, Vogue, The Boston Globe, Salon,
The Millions, Inside Hook, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn
In 1996, the unnamed narrator of Teddy Wayne's Apartment is attending the MFA writing program at Columbia on his father's dime and living in an illegal sublet of a rent-stabilized apartment. Feeling guilty about his good fortune, he offers his spare bedroom--rent-free--to Billy, a talented, charismatic classmate from the Midwest eking out a hand-to-mouth existence in Manhattan.
The narrator's rapport with Billy develops into the friendship he's never had due to a lifetime of holding people at arm's length, hovering at the periphery, feeling "fundamentally defective." But their living arrangement, not to mention their radically different upbringings, breeds tensions neither man could predict. Interrogating the origins of our contemporary political divide and its ties to masculinity and class, Apartment is a gutting portrait of one of New York's many lost, disconnected souls by a writer with an uncommon aptitude for embodying them.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Teddy Wayne’s smart fiction often dives into the deeply insecure worlds of entitled young men—and Apartment is one of his most fascinating trips down that rich, spoiled rabbit hole. Thanks to his father’s resources and his great aunt’s rent-controlled apartment, the book’s anonymous narrator is comfortably ensconced in the thriving heart of mid-’90s New York City. When fellow MFA student Billy, whose roots are Midwestern and working class, moves in, the two men’s differences rapidly bubble over into animosity. As the roommates’ relationship grows increasingly tense, Wayne explores class warfare, toxic masculinity, and what it means to be a creative person. The nods to Clinton-era slacker culture and fads like the Macarena strike a nostalgic note, but at its heart, Wayne’s novel seems to be examining the roots of our current red-state/blue-state cultural divide. That subtext gives Apartment a jolt of immediacy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wayne's subtle, fascinating novel (after Loner) is set in the world of an MFA creative writing program at Columbia in 1996. The anxious, unnamed narrator didn't make any friends at New York University as an undergraduate, and considers it equally unlikely that he will find any among the ambitious, self-assured students in his current classes. He's delighted when charismatic Midwestern scholarship student Billy defends the first story the narrator presents against the attacks of the class, and invites Billy, who has been living in the basement of the bar where he works, to share the two-bedroom apartment the narrator's great-aunt has been allowing him to live in rent-free. Billy offers to clean the apartment and cook dinners in exchange for the room. At first, the narrator revels in the arrangement, but the balance of power between the two shifts gradually but irrevocably over the months that follow. The narrator, inclined to "airbrush out unpalatable blemishes here and there" in his past and his emotional life, notices and then immediately represses things like the way "the thin ribbed cotton of his white tank top hugged body like a second skin." Wayne keeps his attention firmly on the small details that define the evolving relationship as Billy loses interest in the narrator. Wayne excels at creating a narrator both observant of his surroundings and deluded about his own feelings. Underneath the straightforward story, readers will find a careful meditation on class and power.
Customer Reviews
Read in one sitting
What a fantastic book. I’d downloaded a sample a couple of weeks ago and pre-ordered it right away. When I received it yesterday, I started reading and told myself I’d stop after 25 pages to break it up. Then I got to 50 pages, then I got to 100, next thing I knew I was reading until 12:30 a.m.. This is a wonderful look into the lives of two young adults trying to find human connection in chaotic NYC life while in grad school. The characters are well fleshed out and the dialogue is believable. The author tackles grad school literariness wonderfully without pretension or esotericism. The language of the book is exciting to read, and at times felt like mental floss. I also loved how the apartment and Stuy Town were almost characters in and of themselves. Anyone who knows NYC well will really enjoy the geographical references, but if you don’t know it, you’ll likely want to investigate yourself. I can see myself reading this more than once.