Review of The Apartment by Ana Menendez

*The Apartment* by Ana Menendez (2023). Published by Counterpoint.

There are often certain ways I source the books I am going to read next, and I clearly recall that the The Apartment was on some online magazine’s must-read lists for the reason.

I thought the synopsis provided on the website was pretty interesting, so I went to my local library’s website and ended up putting in an order so that when their copies arrived around the publication date, I would be one of the first people on the waitlist. And then

I completely forgot about this waitlist hold and even the fact that the book even existed out in the world, and on a summer June day, I got the email that it was ready for pickup.

So I drove out, and because it was due back in two weeks because of the massive waitlist that accumulated behind me, I ended up being forced to read it almost immediately.

If you know me, I procrastinate on almost everything, and books are no exception. So it’s a miracle that I finished this in time, and didn’t speed run or drop it in the process.

It was a pretty brief novel in my opinion, as the pages fly by due to the introduction of a new character and perspective in every chapter.

Onwards with the review!

History told through the lens of the people living in one apartment throughout the years.

So the setting of this book, which is literally an apartment complex in Miami. We begin with one tenant, then each chapter progresses into another individual living in the apartment after the previous tenant whose narrative we consumed in the previous chapter.

There are some elements of continuity mentioning the previous people who lived there in the details, such as how one woman eventually buys the apartment when she finally goes broke and ends up renting it out to the next tenant. But before we get to the people who ended up here, there’s a nod at the indigenous people who were killed and chased off the land by the colonizers looking to exploit it, them, and the resources around everyone.

This building was specifically built in 1942, which is when the bulk of the narrative takes place after. Each of the people who are mentioned throughout each chapter are interesting in their own ways.

There’s the Cuban concert pianist who left his country and will probably never go back because of the politics, or the Tajik man who may or may not be who he says he is to other people.

In other cases, a death happens while in the apartment, putting a dark shroud over the occupants who are going to come there after the fact.

A lot of the action within the story takes place within the apartment; we rarely step outside of it, and get cracks and hints about what happened to the people we were reading about in the previous chapters.

This isn’t the happiest novel because of that—there’s death, suicide, depression, and despair involved with many other these stories, at some did not meet the happiest endings.

Violence typically isn’t depicted directly in the story, but it’s implied with several of the stories. For example, when the veteran and his wife move into the apartment building after World War II, it’s implied that he’s been abusive to her.

But one of the most interesting characteristics about the novel is that all of the occupants are coming from somewhere else and are in a state of displacement.

Many of them are immigrants that have been forced outside of their home countries in search of a better life, while others, like the ones born in the United States, were forced into circumstances that brought them to this one apartment complex.

Overall Thoughts

I think the premise of the novel is conceptually a good one, but I was struggling to read this book.

I think I was not the target audience here and while I was interested in each of the tenant’s stories, I wanted to stay with them longer than we actually did, which led to me struggling with the content of the book throughout my time reading it because of how I wanted to stay with XYZ character for more time.

The writing itself is very good though, and I thought at the end that I would like to read something different from Ana Menendez because of how well the writing was! Pick this up if you’re interested.

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