In 1996, the narrator of this story is in an MFA writing program in New York City. He is being financially supported by his father and living illegally in a rent stabilized apartment. He experiences guilt that his experience is financially secure when so many of his fellow students are struggling or going into debt to attend the program. So he decides to offer a spare room in his apartment to his classmate, Billy. Although they are both in the same program, the narrator and Billy could not be more unlike one another -- they have significantly different upbringings, experiences, and temperaments. At first the two grow quite close. But over time, their differences become more pronounced and breed greater and greater tensions, with unexpected consequences for both men and their future trajectories.

This is another strong novel from a great author. In a story that on the surface seems very specific, the author explores with insight broader themes related to class, inequality, identity, and loneliness.

Highly recommended!

What a strange and interesting book. Based on the description I was expecting something much different and more in the thriller vein. What the author accomplished was much more impressive. As this more literary story progresses you can literally feel the main characters spinning out of control until a neurotic breaking point.

I felt like these characters were on a scale that was skewed one way at the beginning and totally flipped by the end. I was fascinated by their motivations and quirks.

I also LOVED the 90s Manhattan setting. That’s something we never see and was so interesting.

There were a few questions that I didn’t feel tied up neatly at the end which is why I’m giving it 4 stars.

Apartment is an intense character study that starts as a slow burn and ends in complete heartbreak. The story is compact, entertaining, and took me on a rollercoaster of emotions.

This gave me strong John Boyne vibes and I'm here for it. Teddy Wayne sculpts characters and relationships that feel so human that their many flaws elicit a visceral reaction. The roommate dynamic felt so legitimate that it was actually painful to read (but I'm a glutton for punishment). I found the suppressed homoeroticism, and everything left off the page, to be a show of immense self-control on the author's part.

This book almost pulls off the self-conscious writing about writers thing, and even when it fails, it's still enjoyable. The denouement is a little jarring, but it's still a book I zipped through reading. It's my first time reading Wayne's work and this book made me want to seek out his other novels.

Many thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for gifting me this copy of Apartment by Teddy Wayne. I wasn't overly impressed with this book but did find it interesting enough to continue reading. unnamed narrator has just started the MFA program at Columbia. He illegally sublets his great aunt’s apartment, with the bulk of his expenses funded by his father. A self-proclaimed outsider, he quickly forms a friendship with Billy, a classmate who shows him the type of attention he has rarely received in his life. As their relationship develops, however it becomes apparent how different they truly are. over all this was a 3.5/5 character-driven read.

The Apartment is the title and the catalyst for this novel about writing and relationships. The unnamed narrator of the story is a student in the MFA creative writing program at Columbia University. He lives in a rent-controlled apartment owned by his Great Aunt and paid for by his father. The novel follows the narrator's story after he meets Billy, another student in the MFA program, and offers to let him live him the second bedroom in the apartment. Their friendship grows and then implodes as the narrator struggles to define their relationship.

This style of the writing in this book is what I refer to as "writerly." The author uses long words (I had to look up several of them, which is rare for me) and long leisurely descriptive sentences that, to me, felt as though he was himself participating in the MFA program with this novel. I have not read any other work of his, so I do not know if this is his regular style or if it was affected just for this book. I did not enjoy the style, because I did not feel that it fit the narrative. After all, our unnamed narrator is struggling in his creative writing class; perhaps because he uses long-winded phrases and difficult words in his own class work.

The way that the friendship between Billy and our narrator dissolves also felt rather sudden and incomplete to me. I believe that the narrator was attracted to Billy and I anticipated some sort of falling-out due to a misunderstanding about this. But what actually happened and Billy's over-reaction seemed odd and out of place. Obviously Billy was drifting closer to friends that had more in common with him, and he was uncomfortable with his rent-free living situation, but it seems like the rift between the two men started in a weird place. I would really like to read this story from Billy's point of view. Of course in real life we do not know the other person's point of view, and that is part of the narrator's struggles.

The writing is great, I just did not think it was the right style for this story. I found it distracted me from the story instead of adding to it. It is a book that has stayed with me over the few days since I finished it, and because of that I am giving it a higher rating than I would have when I immediately finished it. I also think my review illustrates the questions this book left me with and the possibility of the great discussions that may be held about this book. I almost don't know if I liked this book or not.

Thank you to NetGalley for the free arc of this novel.

I tried, I really did, but this was a frustrating book. I was glad the NetGalley ARC was on my Kindle. I think I have a good vocabulary, but I used the dictionary a LOT. I am giving it a 3, because I understand not all books are written with me in mind. I am not cerebral enough for this story about two guys in an MFA program at Columbia. Cerebral people probably don’t enjoy the books I do.

3.5, rounded down.

My sincere thank to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for providing me a pre-publication ARC in exchange for this honest review.

This proved to be a very quick read for me, and there was much to admire in it, although it also proved a mite unsatisfying in some respects. Mainly it's a young man's story, and since it has been quite some time since I qualified as part of such a generation, I found it hard to relate to a lot of the concerns; in other words, a case of 'it's not you, it's me'.

The MFA writing background is well elucidated, but I felt like I'd been there before (cf. Bunny). And perhaps because of that milieu, and the fact that all the characters are trying to outdo each other in their lofty written pronouncements, the prose often seemed overly worked and 'flowery', to its detriment. There is also a weird undercurrent of homo-eroticism that never quite comes to fruition, so just left a faint whiff of something unrealized. Since I whizzed through it in less than a day, though, it held my attention, and for the most past I enjoyed the ride.

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing on February 25, 2020

Two young writing students have been accepted into Columbia’s MFA program. Billy, from a broken home in the Midwest, bartends evenings to pay his tuition. He lacks technical proficiency but he has a raw talent for telling honest stories and an ear for dialog. The novel’s narrator comes from a more privileged, East Coast background; his father is picking up his expenses. The narrator has a strong academic understanding of fiction, but he either lacks an artist’s soul or is incapable of allowing his soul to be reflected in his work. The reader will sense that the larger problem is the narrator’s lack of self-awareness. He is a lonely young man who does not understand the root of his loneliness.

The narrator is living illegally in his aunt’s rent-controlled apartment. After Billy is the only workshop student to praise the narrator’s work, the narrator offers to let Billy stay in the apartment’s second bedroom. Billy has been sleeping in the storage room in the bar that employs him and is grateful to have a nicer place to write. The two young men are quite different — Billy loves sports, the narrator loves Must See TV — but they strike up a strong friendship. The narrator spends most of his time with Billy, viewing him as the only real friend in a lonely life. When they party together, singing along to Oasis with others in a crowded bar, the narrator realizes “there is nothing like crooning in a group to a chorus to communicate to yourselves and the world that you are young and drunk and unhindered by responsibility, that the future stretches out endlessly before you like a California highway.” When he is sober, however, the future seems less promising.

The narrator observes Billy coming out of his shell over the course of the novel. While Billy is initially worried that he will appear as a hick to New Yorkers, his good looks and natural charm allow him to fit into any crowd, even when he despises most of the people he meets for their shallow pretentiousness. The narrator envies Billy because the narrator lacks the qualities that make Billy popular. Billy, in turn, resents the ease of the narrator’s life, his reliance on a father to pay expenses rather than doing “character building” labor to pay his own way. Billy has a midwestern tendency to judge anyone harshly who fails to meet his standards of authenticity.

When Billy and the narrator bring a pair of women to their apartment, they each take one to their respective bedrooms. For the narrator, the evening is unsatisfying. Combined with other clues, that encounter leaves the impression that the narrator might be in the closet. The novel’s pivotal point occurs on the next occasion Billy and the narrator pick up two women. During a drunken moment that may or may not be accidental (the narrator’s ability to distinguish accident from intent might not be reliable), Billy forms the obvious impression that the narrator is sexually attracted to him. That moment dissolves the male bond, at least from Billy’s perspective, and causes the narrator pain that leads to the story’s climax.

Well, okay. I get it. The narrator views himself as “fundamentally defective” but lacks insight into the cause of his self-loathing. The Apartment allows the reader to feel smug for understanding the narrator better than the narrator understands himself. Beyond that, I’m not sure what the story is meant to make the reader feel. I felt little empathy for the narrator’s struggle toward self-awareness, a struggle that continues to the novel’s end, given that he seems determinedly obtuse. The only true insight he reaches is that he is a better technician than a storyteller, the same thing he was told by everyone but Billy in his workshops.

Billy is something of a midwestern stereotype, a polite homophobe with low expectations who rails against elitism but tries to be fundamentally decent in an “aw shucks” way. While the narrator will always grapple with loneliness (unless and until he comes to understand why he is lonely), people will always gravitate to Billy; his initial insecurity about living in New York is an anomaly. Yet it is difficult to square Billy’s personality with his ability to write stories that appeal to Columbia MFA students. “I can’t be friends with someone who might be gay” is an incongruous attitude for the kind of writer who would earn praise at Columbia.

The Apartment struck me as something that the novel’s narrator might write. It is technically proficient but it lacks emotional resonance. The two key characters come across as literary creations rather than actual people, and the climax (like their relationship as a whole) struck me as artificial. Teddy Wayne’s technical proficiency suffices to make the reading experience at least partially satisfying, but when I finish a book and think nothing more than “Well, okay, I get it,” I can’t give the book a heartfelt recommendation.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

It's a little hard to read at times. It'll make you uncomfortable also but in the best possible way because this book will take you out of your comfort zone to show you another perspective and a different view that doesn't belong to you. All the best books should always show this. Happy reading!

Atmospheric- despite the fairly spare language- and creepy, this is the tale of a relationship that spins out of control. Set in mid-199os New York, it's also a peek inside MFA programs. The unnamed narrator is a young man of privilege. He lives in an illegal sublet (courtesy his aunt) and circles through but not with his classmates until he meets Billy, a midwesterner thrown a bit off balance by NYC. Billy moves in with the narrator and then things go subtly awry. Wayne packs a lot into this short novel- there are issues of class, identity, talent. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. Wayne shows his own MFA bones in this novel for fans of literary fiction.

Thoroughly enjoyable character study about class differences, as well as self-identification. Palpably lonely, and lovely for that.

Set in the 90s New York a portrait of a sad lonely young man living in an illegal sublet .He is probably closeted he’s morose introverted isolated navigating his way through life New York.A moving sad portrait of this young mans life.#netgalley#bloomsbury,

Unfortunately, like many books written about characters in MFA programs, I found both the book and characters to be a little too pretentious for my liking. I was, however, invested in the story.

Set in 90s NYC, Apartment is a sad, realistic story of lonliness, friendship, envy and isolation -- somewhat depressing, but worth reading.

Engaging....
Compelling....
.....a slow start....but ultimately cerebrally-enjoyable- in an exasperating way....with two young flawed pretentious-competitive - lads - as different as night and day...( social class differences, viewpoint differences, style differences, visions for the future, political, economical, cultural differences, motivation, etc.)....
who meet in the MFA fiction-writing program at Columbia University in 1996.
The unnamed narrator invites Billy to move into a spare room in his apartment....not in New York... ( but near).... in ‘not-an-actual-town called “Stuy Town”. Billy gets to live rent free in exchange for helping keep the apt. clean. These guys had only known each other for two weeks. A little more back story into why the narrator lived in that apartment in the first place.
‘Stuyvesant Town’ was a residential development just north east of the East Village. It’s huge, something like hundred apartment buildings.....
One could get loss... but getting loss finding ‘their apt.’, was the least of the guys problems. Tensions build between the two of them. Both men were lonely...but the author examines their loneliness from different perspectives....and subtly.

The unnamed narrator see’s Billy in a bar after class - at the start of the semester:
“I hadn’t gotten a good look at him up close before. His face was framed by black hair that fell in low-amplitude waves to his jaw, at which point it’s ends curled up like old parchment”.
( old parchment paper?.... fascinating description in my opinion.....as I’ve never seen a person with those inner thoughts, ‘ever’)...
Ha....now, I might start looking...🤫

There were many things the ‘no-named’ -narrator liked about Billy, right away.....
....mostly he liked that Billy said good things about his writing during class discussions, when other classmates didn’t think much of it.
On the surface, Billy presented himself with more confidence than his new buddy ‘no name’...
But then.....something happens between these guys....
........a disconnect begins....

Teddy Wayne’s strength is his superb characterization....enveloped with impressive vocabulary ..... fantastic mundaneness.....and at times pyrotechnically explosive sentences.
Whether likable or not, the characters fly off the page and into our consciousness.

The writing itself was almost a character...(interesting refreshing prose).
Sample:
“Floater, would be the term of flattery, connoting nimble social skills and a chameleonic ability to blend in, though I wasn’t nearly that smooth. I could generally hold up my end of a conversation, knew how to listen and make jokes, but it was a performance, canny mimicry of how I had seen others interact: you nod agreeably at this moment, you supply your opinion or anecdote or question at this juncture, you make a concerned face ( aw) over this unpleasant revelation. I rarely allowed myself the easy way out through what I thought of as ‘script reading’, consistently reciting the same Breezey phrase for greetings or farewells, or recycling an impression or story verbatim. I wasn’t talk-show-host suave, norb where is the awkward or robotic; the seams were well hidden, and the end result was apparent normalcy. Only I was aware of how much effort went into making it look effortless”.

Things I took from this story....( haha)....
....Be careful who you invite to live with you - for free no less!

Seriously....this could make for a great book club discussion.
Not perfect....but a darn good ‘un-put-down-able’ read.

Many thanks to the trio: Bloomsbury Publishing, Netgalley, and Teddy Wayne

The Apartment by Teddy Wayne narrates the life of an unnamed loner and moves through how his life changes after he offers a spare room in his apartment to a fellow graduate student.

Wayne's writing style had me excited and intrigued from the very start. The vocabulary was above what normal books are written at and it took some adjusting. It felt pretentious in the best way, and after finishing, I realized that that was definitely the point. The narrator was wholely unlikeable and frustrating and as a reader I wanted him to realize that he was completely insufferable. The fact that he never does is entirely realistic and I tip my hat to Wayne and his genius.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury for sending me a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

An introverted, possibly closeted, privileged but untalented white male tells a tale of introversion and social withdrawal. It’s readable enough, but not exactly compulsive, moreover there’s scarcely the meat of a novel here. Might it have worked better as a short story? Midlist, I’m afraid.

This book does a good job of capturing the loneliness of being an "average" modern day man. The narrator seems to be closeted (even to himself), and I wish the author had explored that facet of his life further. I wonder, though, if that lack of introspection was deliberate and meant to deepen the narrator's sense of isolation. The author offers no easy solutions to the problem of loneliness--besides, maybe, live with a cat?--leaving the reader frustrated, which I think was the intent. Recommended for all libraries.