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The Apartment
One snowy December morning in an old European city, an American man leaves his shabby hotel to meet a local woman who has agreed to help him search for an apartment to rent. THE APARTMENT follows the couple across a blurry, illogical, and frozen city into a past the man is hoping to forget, and leaves them at the doorstep of an uncertain future—their cityscape punctuated by the man’s lingering memories of time spent in Iraq and the life he abandoned in the United States. Contained within the details of this day is a complex meditation on America’s relationship with the rest of the world, an unflinching glimpse at the permanence of guilt and despair, and an exploration into our desire to cure violence with violence.
A novel about how our relationships to others—and most importantly to ourselves—alters how we see the world, THE APARTMENT perfectly captures the peculiarity and excitement of being a stranger in a strange city. Written in an affecting and intimate tone that gradually expands in scope, intensity, poetry, and drama, Greg Baxter’s clear-eyed first novel tells the intriguing story of these two people on this single day. Both beguiling and raw in its observations and language, THE APARTMENT is a crisp novel with enormous range that offers profound and unexpected wisdom.
A novel about how our relationships to others—and most importantly to ourselves—alters how we see the world, THE APARTMENT perfectly captures the peculiarity and excitement of being a stranger in a strange city. Written in an affecting and intimate tone that gradually expands in scope, intensity, poetry, and drama, Greg Baxter’s clear-eyed first novel tells the intriguing story of these two people on this single day. Both beguiling and raw in its observations and language, THE APARTMENT is a crisp novel with enormous range that offers profound and unexpected wisdom.
193 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
80 people are currently reading
2022 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 378 reviews
September 25, 2012
So I was wandering the aisles of my local bookstore the other day. I wasn’t particularly looking to buy anything, but killing time while it rained outside, and with nothing else to do. It was one of those days. You know the type. That was when I picked Greg Baxter’s novel off the shelf, where it was sandwiched in between two other novels. One of the rules is never judge a book by its cover – but I did just that. Penguin have designed a lovely cover for The Apartment. With cover quotes from Hisham Matar and Roddy Doyle (two very different writers, tonally, causing yet further intrigue). The first few lines of the blurb on the back have sold me, and a reading of the opening page is enough to seal the deal.
The Apartment, then, is that kind of novel. One to discover surreptitiously, to come to with little preconception. Its power lies in its simplicity – that is, a simplicity that carries such overpowering depths. I will tell you little of the plot but to say that it concerns a man who walks around an unnamed European capital city looking for an apartment. With him is a female friend, Saskia, and as the first seeds of romance are sown, life in this unknown city is about to become more fulfilled than the narrator has any hope – or desire - for. All he wants to walk the city, read his novels, and watch the world go by. The world is doing everything it can to keep him engaged with it. We can never truly excise ourselves – interaction with others will always bring connection, and connections sometimes blossom into friendship.
Greg Baxter has previously published one work – A Preparation for Death – of which I am oblivious. I will be tracking it down now. An internet search shortly after finishing The Apartment threw up a few interviews with Baxter (The Apartment provides almost no biographical detail about its author) and reveal him to be a man interested in quality literature, in the responsibility of the novel to excavate the depths of human experience. Certainly The Apartment is unafraid of facing up to the darkness. Its narrator has done some bad things, and they involve Iraq (but they are not what you think), and he meets other people whose engagement with the world is not always stable. There is a trip to some ruins outside the city with another ex-veteran that hints at great darkness in the soul, churning away.
The quality of Baxter’s prose is always strong. At times it becomes hyper-real (lengthy descriptions of very ordinary moments) and I know in some quarters this novel has come under attack for these moments; I feel, however, that they are entirely within character. This man is clearly suffering some form of PTSD – he has sold the objects of his former life, negated his previous experience into oblivion, and wants nothing more than to be a ghost, drifting in a cold, dark place. He would, at times, become calm, focussed on the insignificant, to quell the rising storm. What Baxter has done is create a very human character on the page, flawed and damaged, whose problems are never explained but are to be intuited – which is how life is, when you think about it.
The Apartment, then, is a very strong debut novel. Precise, controlled, and with a humbling beauty to its prose. Greg Baxter is a name to watch, and The Apartment is a novel to read, perhaps more than once (for the first time in a while with a new novel, I wanted to read it again the moment I finished it). I read it in one sitting, a gulp of fresh, winter air. This is perhaps the best way to experience it. Highly recommended.
The Apartment, then, is that kind of novel. One to discover surreptitiously, to come to with little preconception. Its power lies in its simplicity – that is, a simplicity that carries such overpowering depths. I will tell you little of the plot but to say that it concerns a man who walks around an unnamed European capital city looking for an apartment. With him is a female friend, Saskia, and as the first seeds of romance are sown, life in this unknown city is about to become more fulfilled than the narrator has any hope – or desire - for. All he wants to walk the city, read his novels, and watch the world go by. The world is doing everything it can to keep him engaged with it. We can never truly excise ourselves – interaction with others will always bring connection, and connections sometimes blossom into friendship.
Greg Baxter has previously published one work – A Preparation for Death – of which I am oblivious. I will be tracking it down now. An internet search shortly after finishing The Apartment threw up a few interviews with Baxter (The Apartment provides almost no biographical detail about its author) and reveal him to be a man interested in quality literature, in the responsibility of the novel to excavate the depths of human experience. Certainly The Apartment is unafraid of facing up to the darkness. Its narrator has done some bad things, and they involve Iraq (but they are not what you think), and he meets other people whose engagement with the world is not always stable. There is a trip to some ruins outside the city with another ex-veteran that hints at great darkness in the soul, churning away.
The quality of Baxter’s prose is always strong. At times it becomes hyper-real (lengthy descriptions of very ordinary moments) and I know in some quarters this novel has come under attack for these moments; I feel, however, that they are entirely within character. This man is clearly suffering some form of PTSD – he has sold the objects of his former life, negated his previous experience into oblivion, and wants nothing more than to be a ghost, drifting in a cold, dark place. He would, at times, become calm, focussed on the insignificant, to quell the rising storm. What Baxter has done is create a very human character on the page, flawed and damaged, whose problems are never explained but are to be intuited – which is how life is, when you think about it.
The Apartment, then, is a very strong debut novel. Precise, controlled, and with a humbling beauty to its prose. Greg Baxter is a name to watch, and The Apartment is a novel to read, perhaps more than once (for the first time in a while with a new novel, I wanted to read it again the moment I finished it). I read it in one sitting, a gulp of fresh, winter air. This is perhaps the best way to experience it. Highly recommended.
December 17, 2013
It's a stream of consciousness narrative so you obviously need to appreciate that device in order to enjoy the novel. Now, if you do, you are in for a treat. I like it very much indeed, so it works well for me but I also like it because it's unapologetically ambitious. Occasionally it maybe tries to be too many things; there are one or two anecdotes that aren't entirely successful, but, on balance, it's a triumph. Though the narrative moves slowly it also feels unstoppable and I read it in one sitting which is pretty rare.
It's a simple story on the surface but the underlying narrative is complicated and at times troubling. There's hardly ever any sentiment coming through and that flatness makes the more disconcerting events all the more effective.
David Annand, in The Telegraph, said: "The point of the book is that it is accumulative: quietly and sometimes ineffably, its disparate-seeming strands subtly work together to create something that is full of unshowy wisdom and surprising moments of beauty." I couldn't agree more.
It's a simple story on the surface but the underlying narrative is complicated and at times troubling. There's hardly ever any sentiment coming through and that flatness makes the more disconcerting events all the more effective.
David Annand, in The Telegraph, said: "The point of the book is that it is accumulative: quietly and sometimes ineffably, its disparate-seeming strands subtly work together to create something that is full of unshowy wisdom and surprising moments of beauty." I couldn't agree more.
December 4, 2013
An unnamed American searches for an apartment to rent in an unnamed European city, accompanied by a female friend, Saskia, and musing along the way on his time in the Navy and subsequent work in Iraq. He is seeking to forget the past and to start a new life. The relationship between the American and Saskia is platonic but could develop into a romance/affair.
And that is the extent of the plot. In some novels and for some readers, an uneventful story might be a gentle and welcome relief, but the flatlining plot did not work for me in this novel.
And that is the extent of the plot. In some novels and for some readers, an uneventful story might be a gentle and welcome relief, but the flatlining plot did not work for me in this novel.
May 19, 2015
God save me from pointless and pretentious stream of consciousness!
August 9, 2016
"The Apartment" is a short novel with little plot and is as compelling as anything I've read in a long while. It begs to be read straight through. The precision of the prose and the structure, without a single break and with paragraphs that go on, make it hard to put down.
An unnamed American, forty-one years old, has come to an unnamed European city for unexplained reasons and has been living in a tiny, shabby hotel room. He has wandered the streets of the city for six weeks and had casual interactions with various people. He wants to stay, wants to disappear into the anonymity of this cold, wet, bustling place. On the one day that spans the novel, he looks for an apartment, with the help of Saskia, a much younger woman he met in a museum. There is suspense in the novel but it is not based on the outcome of the apartment search or on whether the companionable relationship with Saskia will become something more. It derives from a sense of the unknown and foreboding that hang over the character.
In flashbacks, we learn something about this man. He grew up in a small town in the desert, later lived near a football stadium in a city in the desert, served in the Navy on a submarine, did intelligence work in Iraq, then returned alone to Iraq as a private contractor, where he got rich as an information technology consultant. Is this then to be a war/anti-war story? A PTSD story? As he meets Saskia's friends over the course of the day, the potential for violence seems to be just below the surface.
“I worry that [Saskia] may find me too quiet or boring. I could fill the silence by talking about the past, but I try not to think about the past. For much of my life, I existed in a condition of regret, a regret that was contemporaneous with experience, and sometimes preceded experience. Whenever I think of my past now I see a great black wave that has risen a thousand stories high and is suspended above me...”
The pleasures of “The Apartment” are not in the accumulation of incident but in the accumulation of detail: in descriptions of the city's transit system, the detour to buy an expensive coat, Christmas markets, parks, cafés, the smell of wet stone in every stairwell; in philosophical digressions on perspective in art, Baroque architecture, the perfection of a Bach chaconne, three-cushion billiards; and in the memories of the past that the narrator doesn't want to think about but which flood his thoughts. Extraordinary.
An unnamed American, forty-one years old, has come to an unnamed European city for unexplained reasons and has been living in a tiny, shabby hotel room. He has wandered the streets of the city for six weeks and had casual interactions with various people. He wants to stay, wants to disappear into the anonymity of this cold, wet, bustling place. On the one day that spans the novel, he looks for an apartment, with the help of Saskia, a much younger woman he met in a museum. There is suspense in the novel but it is not based on the outcome of the apartment search or on whether the companionable relationship with Saskia will become something more. It derives from a sense of the unknown and foreboding that hang over the character.
In flashbacks, we learn something about this man. He grew up in a small town in the desert, later lived near a football stadium in a city in the desert, served in the Navy on a submarine, did intelligence work in Iraq, then returned alone to Iraq as a private contractor, where he got rich as an information technology consultant. Is this then to be a war/anti-war story? A PTSD story? As he meets Saskia's friends over the course of the day, the potential for violence seems to be just below the surface.
“I worry that [Saskia] may find me too quiet or boring. I could fill the silence by talking about the past, but I try not to think about the past. For much of my life, I existed in a condition of regret, a regret that was contemporaneous with experience, and sometimes preceded experience. Whenever I think of my past now I see a great black wave that has risen a thousand stories high and is suspended above me...”
The pleasures of “The Apartment” are not in the accumulation of incident but in the accumulation of detail: in descriptions of the city's transit system, the detour to buy an expensive coat, Christmas markets, parks, cafés, the smell of wet stone in every stairwell; in philosophical digressions on perspective in art, Baroque architecture, the perfection of a Bach chaconne, three-cushion billiards; and in the memories of the past that the narrator doesn't want to think about but which flood his thoughts. Extraordinary.
August 8, 2016
This novel's events take place over a single day, albeit with flashbacks and daydreams that mitigate the limits of present tense. For me, echoes of Joyce's Ulysses (and the tone of The Dead), Ishiguro's The Unconsoled (without the hypnagogia), Teju Cole's Open City (a foreign-born walker in a city), Mrs. Dalloway (if only in the sense of foreboding) ...
.... and Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk - except it's a sort of an anti-Billy Lynn, a refutation and near polar opposite. Have any other critics noticed this? (I haven't read any reviews.) It's not only that the narrator of The Apartment is better educated and older than Ben Fountain's characters, but that his entire sensibility is different. His alienation and depression (if that's what we'd call it) takes a different form and his thoughts on violence are more complicated, at least ON THE PAGE (I'm not denigrating the humanity of Bravo Squad). To wit, Baxter's narrator-protagonist's reflections on living near a football stadium after his return from Iraq-service:
My edition had an interview with Greg Baxter in the back matter. These author interviews appended to a book are sometimes throwaway, with softball questions and boilerplate responses, but this one is really interesting. A response to save - exciting to read this because I've never heard any author say this (and I think it's golden advice):
.... and Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk - except it's a sort of an anti-Billy Lynn, a refutation and near polar opposite. Have any other critics noticed this? (I haven't read any reviews.) It's not only that the narrator of The Apartment is better educated and older than Ben Fountain's characters, but that his entire sensibility is different. His alienation and depression (if that's what we'd call it) takes a different form and his thoughts on violence are more complicated, at least ON THE PAGE (I'm not denigrating the humanity of Bravo Squad). To wit, Baxter's narrator-protagonist's reflections on living near a football stadium after his return from Iraq-service:
[...] the loud and gruesome happenstance of American domination. I hated that noise, and that stadium, and I hated everyone in it, and I sat for long periods of time on a couch I'd bought for nothing at a flea market, listening to the celestial ecstasy of the dumb luck of being born American. That collective whoop. I hated that country and every man and woman and child and bug alive in it. [...] And while I thought this, on Sundays, the stadium responded with great, ecstatic, dumb breaths.(This reader couldn't help but read that as a specific response to Billy Lynn.) I realize most young soldiers are more like the Billy Lynn characters, but Baxter's protagonist has a different and just as plausible experience.
The sensation of noticing not only that the scene was more dark than light and more still than twinkling, but also that the darkness was far more intense than the light, was like closing your eyes and opening them to discover that anything beyond what you perceive is attainable only in death.It should ideally be read in one sitting, though I didn't quite manage that. There is point at which the novel cracks open, and it struck me almost unexpectedly - mid-scene, mid-book, mid-conversation, mid-paragraph. If I'd been reading in short spurts the power of that moment would have been diminished.
My edition had an interview with Greg Baxter in the back matter. These author interviews appended to a book are sometimes throwaway, with softball questions and boilerplate responses, but this one is really interesting. A response to save - exciting to read this because I've never heard any author say this (and I think it's golden advice):
[...] I try not to know my characters. I assume that everyone, in real life, is both complex and perfectly ordinary. The more I spend time with people, the more depth our relationship has. But ultimately, if I respect somebody, I must accept that they are unknowable. I try to carry that approach into fiction. I don't create characters with personalities. Rather, I observe the behavior of characters. If an author resists the temptation to type his or her characters, those characters will usually contradict themselves and become vital. If the characters act consistently, they're useless or they're props, No character should fill space, and no character should have a defined role before they appear in a book -- they should not serve a purpose. Janos could have been more of less important. Manuela too. They turned out how they turned out. Importantly, I think, a character is worth putting in a novel only if they are - or could be - worthy of being the main character of another novel. No character should ever be, by nature, minor.
May 12, 2012
I read a lot. As a result, I really value a book that is original and that captures my attention and imagination - one that makes me actively read each word. I really enjoyed The Apartment. Its true that there was little in the way of a traditional plot, but I enjoyed spending the day with the narrator and Saskia. I found myself daydreaming about solitude and the ability to start again. I can't speak to its technical execution as some other reviewers have, but I can say that it was an enjoyable day and I would encourage others to give it a try.
April 29, 2015
Greg Baxter's The Apartment has no chapters, one voice, ( a 41 year old American navy veteran) and takes place over a day around Christmas somewhere in Europe. The unnamed protagonist is looking for an apartment with a woman who he has recently met. He reflects on his war experience, family and friends.
I recommend this short novel for a one-day read, on a cold spring day. Baxter's prose in this book is good. It has such a relaxed and comfortable pace. As you walk through one day in the protagonist's new life you wait for something exciting to happen, to no avail. And yet, although there isn't really a climax, it's a page-turner and a fun journey. Looking forward to reading more books from this author.
I recommend this short novel for a one-day read, on a cold spring day. Baxter's prose in this book is good. It has such a relaxed and comfortable pace. As you walk through one day in the protagonist's new life you wait for something exciting to happen, to no avail. And yet, although there isn't really a climax, it's a page-turner and a fun journey. Looking forward to reading more books from this author.
April 2, 2014
The problem with writing about disaffected people is that it is difficult to win over the reader’s sympathy or trust for your characters. I can understand that the author is trying to make a statement about the disconnected nature of modern society, and the level of sociopathy we all invariably have to engage in, to some degree, in order to be able to function as a proper corporate citizen. But this does not render it palatable or even accessible.
Greg Baxter’s fairly short novel is imitation stream of consciousness: while there are no chapter or section breaks, his nameless protagonist recalls various formative events in his life, while on the hunt for a suitable apartment in a winter-shrouded, nameless city. Along the way he encounters various equally damaged people, which Baxter uses as scaffolding to write about all sorts of things from Bach’s genius to master-planning cities.
We gradually discover that the protagonist has some connection to the ‘Iraq war’ – but being unreliable as well as omniscient, the reader is always caught off-guard, and does not know what to think or whom to believe. Of course, this could be the point all along.
Needless to say there is not much plot progression or even narrative tension here; that there is no real sense of an ending is par for the course for these sorts of novels. I do not think Baxter adds anything new to this subject matter, or even addresses some of the problems that this kind of narrative invariably raises. I found this a frustrating read, with occasional glimpses of something lurking beyond the text, but overall too muddied and ineffectual to make much of an impact.
Greg Baxter’s fairly short novel is imitation stream of consciousness: while there are no chapter or section breaks, his nameless protagonist recalls various formative events in his life, while on the hunt for a suitable apartment in a winter-shrouded, nameless city. Along the way he encounters various equally damaged people, which Baxter uses as scaffolding to write about all sorts of things from Bach’s genius to master-planning cities.
We gradually discover that the protagonist has some connection to the ‘Iraq war’ – but being unreliable as well as omniscient, the reader is always caught off-guard, and does not know what to think or whom to believe. Of course, this could be the point all along.
Needless to say there is not much plot progression or even narrative tension here; that there is no real sense of an ending is par for the course for these sorts of novels. I do not think Baxter adds anything new to this subject matter, or even addresses some of the problems that this kind of narrative invariably raises. I found this a frustrating read, with occasional glimpses of something lurking beyond the text, but overall too muddied and ineffectual to make much of an impact.
December 3, 2011
Thanks to Penguin Canada for supplying me with a review copy of The Apartment.
Before I start, I should probably put things in some kind of perspective.
I first read Dostoevsky at age 12. I am a voracious, omnivorous reader. I have probably read every genre available. I am more than willing to give any book a chance.
So when I say I had a lot of difficulty with this book, it means I had real issues.
My 3 star rating reflects a great deal of ambivalence about Greg Baxter's choice of format. I really struggled to keep reading it. Stream of consciousness is a difficult literary device, and I am afraid it is too often used by writers out to prove how smart they are. Perhaps if this book had been a straight narrative, I might have given it 5 stars. As it is, I believe that Mr. Baxter has unnecessarily limited his audience through his own choices.
The character's disjointed recollections of war, family and life, dropped into a narrative about a search for an apartment in a strange city in a new country might have been more engaging if it had not been necessary to force myself to continue reading every step of the way. I fought the urge to skip pages, to race ahead and see if the book changed in some way. There really is no beginning, middle or end. No overweening crisis, nothing of import to be solved, and no satisfying conclusion, no final scene which puts a period to the story.
At the end of the book you know a little more about the main character, who he is or was, but not much more about what he wants, or why.
For all Mr. Baxter is a very good wordsmith, I am sorry I cannot give this book a higher rating.
Before I start, I should probably put things in some kind of perspective.
I first read Dostoevsky at age 12. I am a voracious, omnivorous reader. I have probably read every genre available. I am more than willing to give any book a chance.
So when I say I had a lot of difficulty with this book, it means I had real issues.
My 3 star rating reflects a great deal of ambivalence about Greg Baxter's choice of format. I really struggled to keep reading it. Stream of consciousness is a difficult literary device, and I am afraid it is too often used by writers out to prove how smart they are. Perhaps if this book had been a straight narrative, I might have given it 5 stars. As it is, I believe that Mr. Baxter has unnecessarily limited his audience through his own choices.
The character's disjointed recollections of war, family and life, dropped into a narrative about a search for an apartment in a strange city in a new country might have been more engaging if it had not been necessary to force myself to continue reading every step of the way. I fought the urge to skip pages, to race ahead and see if the book changed in some way. There really is no beginning, middle or end. No overweening crisis, nothing of import to be solved, and no satisfying conclusion, no final scene which puts a period to the story.
At the end of the book you know a little more about the main character, who he is or was, but not much more about what he wants, or why.
For all Mr. Baxter is a very good wordsmith, I am sorry I cannot give this book a higher rating.
July 7, 2013
On the plus, quick read. Interesting style, just a jumble of stream of consciousness narration. Good sense of place (in that you don't know exactly what/where/who) and nice descriptive style.
But what I struggle with is this sort of pointless floating throughout the book is only 'worth' something if it has an 'aha moment' ending. This didn't so I felt deflated. Maybe there's some depth but it's obviously not within my powers to find it!
But what I struggle with is this sort of pointless floating throughout the book is only 'worth' something if it has an 'aha moment' ending. This didn't so I felt deflated. Maybe there's some depth but it's obviously not within my powers to find it!
February 16, 2014
Looking for a pretentious piece of crap? The Apartment is your book. Must be easy to write something that has no plot and no real point. Also very easy for people to project what they want to see onto the non-existent plot. Want an interesting literary novel about the events that happen to a person in one day? Stick with The Hours by Michael Cunningham.
June 27, 2021
I really liked this, although I’m not sure I can say why. It suited my mood this past week, something quiet and contemplative, where I followed this man around an old European city -- old to the world, but new to him -- as he and his friend Saskia try to find him an apartment. As he meets Saskia’s friends and interacts with others in this new environment, he’s thinking his thoughts and remembering his memories and trying to reconcile something in his past, and I’m listening and trying to figure out who he is. I loved the writing and was content to drift along with him in low-drama mode. His memories, conversations, and reactions to experiences start adding up to a portrait of a complex human being, slowly unveiled through his reactions and hints, while never delivering any conclusive answers.
This book, and others like it, are often accused of having no plot. Perhaps my understanding of “plot”” is flawed, but there was a quest involved for the narrator, which was his search for a way to live. There was also my quest to find out who this man was, to solve that mystery through what he was sharing, and also through what I could surmise about what he was leaving out. He has memory problems, some significant self-loathing, and obvious moral dilemmas regarding his past. As another reviewer put it, the story about the apartment search also serves as “scaffolding” on which to hang digressions through conversations and internal monologues (which I enjoyed very much, BTW) about history, art, architecture, war, imperialism, music, violence, culture, social justice, and the values of societal structures, rituals, and expectations.
There was no big reveal at the end or closure of any sort. At least I don’t think there was, because, to be honest, I was unsure about the meaning of the ending. The man is still a mystery to me. But sometimes a book’s questions are more important than the answers. I think those are the types of books I like the best.
I’m sad that this book has only a 3.01 star average rating on Goodreads. One reviewer called it “a pretentious piece of crap.” That person, a writer, lists his influences as Stephen King, Jean Auel, James Michener, and Ken Follett, popular storytellers all, and I read all of them in my teens and early 20s. If these are your go-tos for quality literature, you may not enjoy this book. If you like something a little more thoughtful, at 193 pages, it might be worth a little of your time. I hope it finds its audience.
This book, and others like it, are often accused of having no plot. Perhaps my understanding of “plot”” is flawed, but there was a quest involved for the narrator, which was his search for a way to live. There was also my quest to find out who this man was, to solve that mystery through what he was sharing, and also through what I could surmise about what he was leaving out. He has memory problems, some significant self-loathing, and obvious moral dilemmas regarding his past. As another reviewer put it, the story about the apartment search also serves as “scaffolding” on which to hang digressions through conversations and internal monologues (which I enjoyed very much, BTW) about history, art, architecture, war, imperialism, music, violence, culture, social justice, and the values of societal structures, rituals, and expectations.
There was no big reveal at the end or closure of any sort. At least I don’t think there was, because, to be honest, I was unsure about the meaning of the ending. The man is still a mystery to me. But sometimes a book’s questions are more important than the answers. I think those are the types of books I like the best.
I’m sad that this book has only a 3.01 star average rating on Goodreads. One reviewer called it “a pretentious piece of crap.” That person, a writer, lists his influences as Stephen King, Jean Auel, James Michener, and Ken Follett, popular storytellers all, and I read all of them in my teens and early 20s. If these are your go-tos for quality literature, you may not enjoy this book. If you like something a little more thoughtful, at 193 pages, it might be worth a little of your time. I hope it finds its audience.
December 25, 2013
For thousands of years, reaching all the way back to Homer, people have told about war by telling stories about war. But in 1918, even as Europe was still smoldering, Rebecca West published her first novel, “Return of the Soldier,” about a shell-shocked vet suffering from amnesia. It was a new kind of story for a new kind of carnage. A few years later, Septimus jumped to his death in Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway.” And in 1926, Hemingway wrote his finest book, “The Sun Also Rises,” a war novel in which war has been driven entirely off the page. Instead of battle scenes, he portrayed a stream of endless socializing rendered in understated sentences, pared down to striking simplicity, as a wounded vet struggles to go through the motions of what passes now for normal life.
Since then, any number of novelists have felt the importance of being Ernest, but not every echo of Papa’s stark, self-consciously restrained style carries the same power. In fact, one could argue that his influence has spread like mustard gas across certain fields of modern fiction, asphyxiating characters and leaving us with a lot of very finely crafted novels in which nothing is moving.
The latest example comes from Greg Baxter, whose first novel, “The Apartment,” ambles through a single December day in a European city. The city is never named. The narrator, a depressed Iraq War vet, is never named either, but he tells us, “I wanted to live in a cold city. I couldn’t say precisely why I picked this one.” Neither can I. Six weeks ago, he arrived from an unnamed American city with lots of cash, and since then he’s been living in “the shallow, purgatorial waters of hotel life.” When the proprietor asks him why he’s come here, he thinks, “I didn’t know. . . . I am trying to live without a preoccupation with endpoints.” Mission accomplished.
The narrator has a single friend in this city, a pretty, young economist named Saskia whom he recently met at an art museum. “We act as though we ought to have things to talk about,” he says, “but we don’t have those things. We have fallen into a swift intimacy of pure circumstance.” When she asks what he does for a living, he says, “Nothing.” And he means it. Over the course of the novel, he and Saskia wander around the city, eating, shopping and looking for an apartment. I won’t ruin the suspense by telling you what kind of tea he drinks.
Sitting in one clean, well-lighted place, he says, “Here, in this city, intense joy and intense sorrow are extinct. The place is too old for that kind of naivete. Everyone here responds to these extinctions by opening doors for each other, or making room at tables — they are generous and polite. I admire this — to celebrate the extinction of hope with ritual and composure.”
Periodically, he reflects bitterly on his lucrative success as a contractor in Iraq. He confesses that he “assigned death from a distance.” He’s ashamed of his role in the war; the army’s waste and destruction disgust him. And so he has come here to be invisible, to escape a great black wave of regret by appreciating simple, pure things, like the trumpeter in a small Christmas market on the street: “A good musician treats a small audience the same way he treats a large one, with humility and grace. A good musician does not play for glory. He plays to thank fortune for his ability. He plays to honor his predecessors.”
Isn’t it pretty to think so?
Most of “The Apartment” is written in carefully modulated sentences appropriately laced with smart disquisitions on architecture and art as we’re led to infer the psychological damage of having “added evil to the world.” But what’s maddening about the novel is that it periodically tantalizes us with evidence of Baxter’s real talent: his ability to create tension, to tell, you know, a story. Even a sepia-toned memory of the narrator visiting his old girlfriend’s house is filled with anguish and pathos. And though nothing particularly dramatic happens in the flashbacks to his days as an intelligence contractor in Iraq, those scenes are frightening and evocative — entirely unlike the affectless noodling on the streets of an unnamed city. Sadly, the membrane between quiet depth and pretentious affectation is thinner than a French poet’s black turtleneck.
In the last paragraph, our narrator says, “I began to sense that everybody thought of me as a bit of tedium.”
You have to admire that kind of self-knowledge.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
Since then, any number of novelists have felt the importance of being Ernest, but not every echo of Papa’s stark, self-consciously restrained style carries the same power. In fact, one could argue that his influence has spread like mustard gas across certain fields of modern fiction, asphyxiating characters and leaving us with a lot of very finely crafted novels in which nothing is moving.
The latest example comes from Greg Baxter, whose first novel, “The Apartment,” ambles through a single December day in a European city. The city is never named. The narrator, a depressed Iraq War vet, is never named either, but he tells us, “I wanted to live in a cold city. I couldn’t say precisely why I picked this one.” Neither can I. Six weeks ago, he arrived from an unnamed American city with lots of cash, and since then he’s been living in “the shallow, purgatorial waters of hotel life.” When the proprietor asks him why he’s come here, he thinks, “I didn’t know. . . . I am trying to live without a preoccupation with endpoints.” Mission accomplished.
The narrator has a single friend in this city, a pretty, young economist named Saskia whom he recently met at an art museum. “We act as though we ought to have things to talk about,” he says, “but we don’t have those things. We have fallen into a swift intimacy of pure circumstance.” When she asks what he does for a living, he says, “Nothing.” And he means it. Over the course of the novel, he and Saskia wander around the city, eating, shopping and looking for an apartment. I won’t ruin the suspense by telling you what kind of tea he drinks.
Sitting in one clean, well-lighted place, he says, “Here, in this city, intense joy and intense sorrow are extinct. The place is too old for that kind of naivete. Everyone here responds to these extinctions by opening doors for each other, or making room at tables — they are generous and polite. I admire this — to celebrate the extinction of hope with ritual and composure.”
Periodically, he reflects bitterly on his lucrative success as a contractor in Iraq. He confesses that he “assigned death from a distance.” He’s ashamed of his role in the war; the army’s waste and destruction disgust him. And so he has come here to be invisible, to escape a great black wave of regret by appreciating simple, pure things, like the trumpeter in a small Christmas market on the street: “A good musician treats a small audience the same way he treats a large one, with humility and grace. A good musician does not play for glory. He plays to thank fortune for his ability. He plays to honor his predecessors.”
Isn’t it pretty to think so?
Most of “The Apartment” is written in carefully modulated sentences appropriately laced with smart disquisitions on architecture and art as we’re led to infer the psychological damage of having “added evil to the world.” But what’s maddening about the novel is that it periodically tantalizes us with evidence of Baxter’s real talent: his ability to create tension, to tell, you know, a story. Even a sepia-toned memory of the narrator visiting his old girlfriend’s house is filled with anguish and pathos. And though nothing particularly dramatic happens in the flashbacks to his days as an intelligence contractor in Iraq, those scenes are frightening and evocative — entirely unlike the affectless noodling on the streets of an unnamed city. Sadly, the membrane between quiet depth and pretentious affectation is thinner than a French poet’s black turtleneck.
In the last paragraph, our narrator says, “I began to sense that everybody thought of me as a bit of tedium.”
You have to admire that kind of self-knowledge.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
December 18, 2013
This is about a guy who moves to a city in Europe after being a soldier and then a contractor in Iraq. The book covers one cold snowy day while he is looking for an apartment with a friend so he can move from the shabby hotel room he is living in now. The story of his life in the US and Iraq just creeps in while he is thinking during a bus ride or talking to someone.
I took this book home from the library thinking I would finish it in 2 days since it is short but I had to stay up until I did finish it. Another writer would make this story twice as long and only tell half as much. At the end of the book I felt I had read someone's true story.
Just as an aside I think the city is in Turkey which is on both Europe and Asia--a church is mentioned that can be looked up.
I took this book home from the library thinking I would finish it in 2 days since it is short but I had to stay up until I did finish it. Another writer would make this story twice as long and only tell half as much. At the end of the book I felt I had read someone's true story.
Just as an aside I think the city is in Turkey which is on both Europe and Asia--a church is mentioned that can be looked up.
December 4, 2013
There’s not a lot of plot in this first novel from Greg Baxter. An unnamed American wanders through an unnamed European city, with a local woman, Saskia, looking for an apartment to rent. We follow them on their journeys across the snowy and freezing city, as they catch buses, go shopping, visit cafés and restaurants, meet other people. And that’s about it. But this deceptively simple story hides a complex and often disturbing story of one man’s past and his quest for a new beginning. We discover that the narrator has served in Iraq, and has ambivalent feelings about his experiences there. In flashbacks we learn about his time in the military and as a civilian contractor. These disjointed recollections are all the more powerful for being recounted in the same flat style as the rest of the book. The narrator rarely shows much emotion. He appears to want a life of anonymity and to fade into to the background of the bustling city.
Elegantly written, in a spare and understated prose, I found this book totally mesmerising. The stream of consciousness narration is particularly effective here as it allows us accompany the narrator each moment of the day, and share in the mundane and prosaic details of his life. The narrative moves forward slowly, calmly but inexorably and it’s very hard to stop reading. The power of the book is in its apparent simplicity, as the reader gradually comprehends the hidden layers beneath the surface.
Baxter captures the atmosphere of a large European city in the depths of winter, the bone-chilling cold, the transport, the Christmas markets, and the sense of alienation and excitement of being a stranger in such a city. The narrator remains an outsider, curiously devoid of engagement in what goes on around him, and yet eager to become part of this new home.
Intriguing and original, this is a book that rewards re-reading, and I very much enjoyed it.
Elegantly written, in a spare and understated prose, I found this book totally mesmerising. The stream of consciousness narration is particularly effective here as it allows us accompany the narrator each moment of the day, and share in the mundane and prosaic details of his life. The narrative moves forward slowly, calmly but inexorably and it’s very hard to stop reading. The power of the book is in its apparent simplicity, as the reader gradually comprehends the hidden layers beneath the surface.
Baxter captures the atmosphere of a large European city in the depths of winter, the bone-chilling cold, the transport, the Christmas markets, and the sense of alienation and excitement of being a stranger in such a city. The narrator remains an outsider, curiously devoid of engagement in what goes on around him, and yet eager to become part of this new home.
Intriguing and original, this is a book that rewards re-reading, and I very much enjoyed it.
May 4, 2013
I picked this book up on a whim (sometimes my best book choices are made that way), and I am very pleased that I did. It pushed my reading boundaries - in that you don't get to know the narrator's name, and there are no chapters. For a reader such as me that likes to know things, to pin things down, to have some sort of order, it was freeing to have these goals at least, removed. The present day action in the novel takes place within a very short space of time, yet we are taken on a journey into the past, as the narrator travels an unknown European city in search of an apartment. You begin to understand why he has chosen to live as he does, although I suspect there are still events in his life that make him who he is, and of which we will never know. By the time you finish reading, you feel as if you have lived a lifetime, in my opinion at least. Read this if you want to be challenged - not with regards to the content, but with regards to the style. Every word in this novel is necessary - I would love to write such a pared-back book as this.
December 30, 2014
This was one of my Christmas presents -- and I started it on the plane ride back to London from Houston.
I had a reading experience that was oddly compatible with the plotting of the book . . . as the book takes place over the course of one very long winter's day (with flashbacks), and I read it that way as well. The book is all about dislocation, and being an observer displaced both in the world and from oneself -- so, a perfect travelling book.
The narrator (male, American, 41) is in an unnamed Germanic city -- maybe Berlin or Vienna -- but that landscape, quite vividly described, is constantly being contrasted with the desert town he grew up in and the Iraqi landscape (he has previously worked as an independent defence contractor in Iraq). There are some beautiful moments in the book, really quite philosophical at times -- with some interesting observations on music and art. You don't really ever "know" the narrator, but you aren't really meant to. It ends rather abruptly, and without any closure -- but it was nevertheless a satisfying reading experience.
I had a reading experience that was oddly compatible with the plotting of the book . . . as the book takes place over the course of one very long winter's day (with flashbacks), and I read it that way as well. The book is all about dislocation, and being an observer displaced both in the world and from oneself -- so, a perfect travelling book.
The narrator (male, American, 41) is in an unnamed Germanic city -- maybe Berlin or Vienna -- but that landscape, quite vividly described, is constantly being contrasted with the desert town he grew up in and the Iraqi landscape (he has previously worked as an independent defence contractor in Iraq). There are some beautiful moments in the book, really quite philosophical at times -- with some interesting observations on music and art. You don't really ever "know" the narrator, but you aren't really meant to. It ends rather abruptly, and without any closure -- but it was nevertheless a satisfying reading experience.
December 29, 2013
I'd rate this 4.5 stars.
Greg Baxter's debut novel, The Apartment, is a terrifically written, somewhat meandering book that both is and is not about what you think it is.
In an unnamed European city (although some reviewers have guessed this is Prague, Baxter said the novel's setting is an amalgamation of several different cities), an unnamed American narrator is planning to meet his friend, Saskia, to find him an apartment, as he had been living austerely in a formerly elegant hotel since he arrived. The narrator is in his early 40s, a former Navy sailor who had served on a submarine in Iraq and then returned to that country as a defense contractor. But he doesn't like to talk about the past, because of the things he did while he was in Iraq.
"I could fill the silence by talking about the past, but I try not to think about the past. For much of my life, I existed in a condition of regret that was contemporaneous with experience, and which sometimes preceded experience. Whenever I think of my past now I see a great black wave that has risen a thousand stories high and is suspended above above me, as though I am a city by the sea, and I hold the wave in suspension through a perspective that is as constrained as a streak of clear glass in a fogged-up window."
The novel takes place over a one-day period, although the narrator finds himself reminiscing on a number of encounters he has had with people throughout his life, both after arriving in this city and in his life before coming to the city. It is around Christmastime, and winter has the city in its thrall. Snow falls throughout the day.
The narrator and Saskia travel throughout the city, on foot as well as by train, bus, streetcar, and taxi. They stop at cafés and bars, shops and outdoor holiday markets, tourist attractions and remarkable architecture. They encounter several of Saskia's friends, including the misanthropic Janos and the pretty yet flighty Manuela, and his being an American makes him more interesting and more loathsome to some. Throughout the day they spend much of their time both talking and not talking, about art, culture, history, their families, and at times the narrator is willing to answer basic questions about his military service and where he made his money.
"Saskia can move quickly from being very cool to being very funny. It makes me think she's not trying to be one or the other. I wish we could preserve our relationship as it is now for a long time. I wish we could remain strangers."
The narrator has spent much of his life trying to disengage from connections and commitments despite his work history. And although he is reluctant to let anyone know too much about him, and loves the lack of permanence that hotel living allows, he looks forward to losing himself in the city and having an apartment of his own.
While in much of the novel the pair is on the hunt for an apartment, the plot frequently veers off topic, as the narrator remembers people he has encountered, including his closest childhood friend back in America, as well as several instances during his time in Iraq. While many of these reminiscences happen without warning or connection to what is currently happening, my guess is that they occur because the narrator suddenly encounters something that triggers a memory or sensation.
This is a very short novel, only about 210 pages, but it is very weighty. It is so much more than I expected, more complex than a simple search for an apartment. It is a book about relationships, about avoiding your past but knowing that it shapes you, about trying to remain disengaged while simultaneously engaging. And more than that, it is a paean to immersing yourself in a place, in its culture, its history, its people, and its beauty.
I really enjoyed Baxter's storytelling ability in this book, even if I wished it had stayed on course a little more than it did. While the vagueness of the setting and the narrator's life was intriguing, I would have enjoyed a little more specificity to flesh out my experience. But in the end, this is a powerful and tremendously compelling story that I am really glad I read, and I can't stop thinking about it.
Greg Baxter's debut novel, The Apartment, is a terrifically written, somewhat meandering book that both is and is not about what you think it is.
In an unnamed European city (although some reviewers have guessed this is Prague, Baxter said the novel's setting is an amalgamation of several different cities), an unnamed American narrator is planning to meet his friend, Saskia, to find him an apartment, as he had been living austerely in a formerly elegant hotel since he arrived. The narrator is in his early 40s, a former Navy sailor who had served on a submarine in Iraq and then returned to that country as a defense contractor. But he doesn't like to talk about the past, because of the things he did while he was in Iraq.
"I could fill the silence by talking about the past, but I try not to think about the past. For much of my life, I existed in a condition of regret that was contemporaneous with experience, and which sometimes preceded experience. Whenever I think of my past now I see a great black wave that has risen a thousand stories high and is suspended above above me, as though I am a city by the sea, and I hold the wave in suspension through a perspective that is as constrained as a streak of clear glass in a fogged-up window."
The novel takes place over a one-day period, although the narrator finds himself reminiscing on a number of encounters he has had with people throughout his life, both after arriving in this city and in his life before coming to the city. It is around Christmastime, and winter has the city in its thrall. Snow falls throughout the day.
The narrator and Saskia travel throughout the city, on foot as well as by train, bus, streetcar, and taxi. They stop at cafés and bars, shops and outdoor holiday markets, tourist attractions and remarkable architecture. They encounter several of Saskia's friends, including the misanthropic Janos and the pretty yet flighty Manuela, and his being an American makes him more interesting and more loathsome to some. Throughout the day they spend much of their time both talking and not talking, about art, culture, history, their families, and at times the narrator is willing to answer basic questions about his military service and where he made his money.
"Saskia can move quickly from being very cool to being very funny. It makes me think she's not trying to be one or the other. I wish we could preserve our relationship as it is now for a long time. I wish we could remain strangers."
The narrator has spent much of his life trying to disengage from connections and commitments despite his work history. And although he is reluctant to let anyone know too much about him, and loves the lack of permanence that hotel living allows, he looks forward to losing himself in the city and having an apartment of his own.
While in much of the novel the pair is on the hunt for an apartment, the plot frequently veers off topic, as the narrator remembers people he has encountered, including his closest childhood friend back in America, as well as several instances during his time in Iraq. While many of these reminiscences happen without warning or connection to what is currently happening, my guess is that they occur because the narrator suddenly encounters something that triggers a memory or sensation.
This is a very short novel, only about 210 pages, but it is very weighty. It is so much more than I expected, more complex than a simple search for an apartment. It is a book about relationships, about avoiding your past but knowing that it shapes you, about trying to remain disengaged while simultaneously engaging. And more than that, it is a paean to immersing yourself in a place, in its culture, its history, its people, and its beauty.
I really enjoyed Baxter's storytelling ability in this book, even if I wished it had stayed on course a little more than it did. While the vagueness of the setting and the narrator's life was intriguing, I would have enjoyed a little more specificity to flesh out my experience. But in the end, this is a powerful and tremendously compelling story that I am really glad I read, and I can't stop thinking about it.
January 24, 2014
Smart, captivating, mysterious, disturbing, atmospheric. An unnamed man in an unnamed city in Eastern Europe (Prague?) accompanies his friend Saskia to find an apartment for himself so he can move out of the hotel that he is living in. That’s it. That’s the plot. But embedded in that plot are dozens of memory flashbacks by the protagonist, suggesting that all is not as it seems. The format is stream of consciousness, long, long paragraphs, almost one continuous run-on sentence with no chapter breaks and no quotation marks around the dialogue. The tense changes abruptly and for no reason, but it works. A sense of vertigo accompanies the reading of this work.
Although there are numerous characters in the book, only the protagonist is fully developed. Individual sentences hit you upside the head. The protagonist goes to hear some music that is recommended by his landlord. “Mr. Pyz asked me what I thought about it the next morning. There was a time in my life when I would have wanted to say it was terrible, but that time has passed.” Later, the idea to quit smoking occurs to him, but then he thinks, “But all I do is walk, and I don’t want to live an especially long time.” These sorts of observations are rare even in the best of writers.
There are wonderful digressions along the way, lectures on The Flaggelation of Christ by Piero della Francesca, and the Chaconne from Bach’ s Violin Partita no. 2. Although the content of the lectures could easily be cobbled together from multiple sources (Wikipedia, etc.), their inclusion in the novel indicates a profound appreciation of art and music on the part of Baxter, and is among the many surprises that occur in this brilliant first novel.
When I had finished the book, I felt a strange sense of having been twisted out of alignment, disturbed in a way that made me want to grab the next book in the queue so that I could forget what I had read, but knowing full well that there was no escaping the powerful impact of The Apartment.
Although there are numerous characters in the book, only the protagonist is fully developed. Individual sentences hit you upside the head. The protagonist goes to hear some music that is recommended by his landlord. “Mr. Pyz asked me what I thought about it the next morning. There was a time in my life when I would have wanted to say it was terrible, but that time has passed.” Later, the idea to quit smoking occurs to him, but then he thinks, “But all I do is walk, and I don’t want to live an especially long time.” These sorts of observations are rare even in the best of writers.
There are wonderful digressions along the way, lectures on The Flaggelation of Christ by Piero della Francesca, and the Chaconne from Bach’ s Violin Partita no. 2. Although the content of the lectures could easily be cobbled together from multiple sources (Wikipedia, etc.), their inclusion in the novel indicates a profound appreciation of art and music on the part of Baxter, and is among the many surprises that occur in this brilliant first novel.
When I had finished the book, I felt a strange sense of having been twisted out of alignment, disturbed in a way that made me want to grab the next book in the queue so that I could forget what I had read, but knowing full well that there was no escaping the powerful impact of The Apartment.
March 8, 2014
Baxter has mastered a beautiful minimalist style that reminded me variously of Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and Haruki Murakami. What this novel lacks is the emotional resonance of those authors' best works. The detailed descriptions of a single day spent wandering an imaginary city (probably in Central or Eastern Europe) looking for an apartment are almost hypnotic. This present-day narrative is interwoven with flashbacks to the unnamed narrator's previous wanderings around the fictional city and to his past in the U.S. and in Iraq, where he was first a naval officer and then an intelligence contractor. We gradually learn that he is deeply troubled by his experiences in Iraq and has fled to this city in an attempt to escape his old identity and become completely anonymous. (Fortunately, his work as a war contractor has also made him independently wealthy.) The tension between his past and present gradually builds suspense until it seems as if some dramatic, possibly violent climax is inevitable. But then the novel simply ends without resolution. Sometimes an ambiguous ending can be very effective, prompting me to imagine a variety of conclusions and meanings. But for that to happen, I have to care about the characters and know what they care about to a greater degree than I did with this novel. It was an interesting artistic and intellectual exercise, but ultimately rather empty.
January 30, 2014
I was reading “The Orenda” and I needed a break from all that violence and religious matter (don’t get me wrong, “The Orenda” is really good, it touches all my feelings). As “The Apartment” was showcased in the “Entertainment Weekly”, as one of the “top 10” last December, so I decided to read it.
Well, it is really well written.
It is well detailed.
I loved the structure, the narrative, how the narrator fluctuate from present to past (it is funny that only at the end I realized that we don’t know the name of the narrator or the name of the location – but in my mind I had the impression, from the beginning, that it was in Paris). The narrative moves slowly but it also feels unstoppable.
But, apart from the technical part, I have to be frank, NOTHING happens in this book. There is no violence (just subtly), sex, drama, arguments, conflicts, not even a joke (well, there are one or two anecdotes that aren't entirely successful)!
Well, it is really well written.
It is well detailed.
I loved the structure, the narrative, how the narrator fluctuate from present to past (it is funny that only at the end I realized that we don’t know the name of the narrator or the name of the location – but in my mind I had the impression, from the beginning, that it was in Paris). The narrative moves slowly but it also feels unstoppable.
But, apart from the technical part, I have to be frank, NOTHING happens in this book. There is no violence (just subtly), sex, drama, arguments, conflicts, not even a joke (well, there are one or two anecdotes that aren't entirely successful)!
June 13, 2018
Why do I love this book so much? The author does nothing wrong. Nothing. I mean that in the very best way. It works perfectly. The characters are mysterious and interesting, the city is mysterious and interesting, the prose is great. It is all East European atmosphere and intriguing observations, which sounds annoying, but is not here, NOT AT ALL. All the adjectives from the blurbs are true: subtle, tense, elegant, hypnotic, Sebaldian, enigmatic. My only regret is that I read this in small pieces, and often distracted. Next time I will read it in a locked room, in winter, over 6 hours straight, with no phones, food or humans allowed. I haven't read the critical reviews yet--only 3 stars overall, people?--but I bet they center around the complaint "but nothing happens." That is the perfect beauty of the thing. The ending just knocks me out. I look forward to reading more books by Greg Baxter.
July 20, 2014
This is the second time I can remember finishing a one-star book. Both times it was because I thought the author must be going somewhere with the story. Both times I was mistaken. There is no real plot to this book, and very little characterization. An ex-pat American (no name) has moved to some Eastern European city (no name) and decides to move from a hotel to an apartment. He looks at one and takes it. End of story.
I didn't really like the protagonist, though I don't feel I really got to know him. There are a few flashbacks, few of which really add anything to the story.
I listened to the audio version, and the reader's voice almost put me into a stupor. I did pull out of it once to laugh out loud near the end of the book, when the first person narrator states, "I began to sense that everybody thought of me as a bit of tedium." Amen to that!
I didn't really like the protagonist, though I don't feel I really got to know him. There are a few flashbacks, few of which really add anything to the story.
I listened to the audio version, and the reader's voice almost put me into a stupor. I did pull out of it once to laugh out loud near the end of the book, when the first person narrator states, "I began to sense that everybody thought of me as a bit of tedium." Amen to that!
May 5, 2018
The most exciting part of the book is the back cover where all 193 pages are wrapped up into one paragraph. Save yourself the time and boredom by just reading the back cover and then moving on with your life. The writing is not that great, the main character isn’t interesting and while nothing really has to happen for a story to be good, this one is just dull.
February 28, 2012
Stream-of-consciousness, not very fast-paced, lots of flashbacks and introspection. I say all of those things as compliments towards this book, but also as a bit of a warning for anyone who isn't inclined towards a meandering narrative in which little actually "happens."
The book teetered on the brink of some lovely "Aha" moments, but I didn't ever feel it actually tipped over into the realm of deeper ideas it could have. Baxter does do a fantastic job of conveying the atmosphere and feeling of winter, which I appreciated.
The book teetered on the brink of some lovely "Aha" moments, but I didn't ever feel it actually tipped over into the realm of deeper ideas it could have. Baxter does do a fantastic job of conveying the atmosphere and feeling of winter, which I appreciated.
March 26, 2015
George Baxter is an excellent writer. He really develops atmosphere. But, I found this novel unsatisfying as there was no character development. I felt as if I were watching cardboard characters move from one location to the next.
February 24, 2021
What was that all about? This book belongs on the “to re-read” shelf. It might make sense the fourth time around. It was totally mesmerizing but more and more confusing as time went on.
February 23, 2021
"𝘈 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘢 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶’𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 - 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘵."
Ever felt compelled to move somewhere new, somewhere foreign, unexpectedly? Our unnamed narrator did and here he tells us his story of how he got his apartment a few weeks after he moved to Europe. May not seem enticing, but it kind of is. The city is cold and frozen, he does not know the language, and only has an acquaintance who is helping him find a place. Throughout the day he shares glimpses of his past in the military and as a civilian contractor, giving reflections on his life and where he’s at now.
The writing is very unique as there are no chapters, it’s just one continuous flow, and there is very little dialogue (and what we do get is not in quotations). Very descriptive, I felt like I was there walking the snowy streets, sitting in the warm and crowded cafes. Whenever he talks about riding the trains and being in the stations, it reminded me of when I lived in DC and daily rode the metro. There were some random moments in this but over the course of a day, how often do we experience random moments, have little conversations, recall old memories, and notice odd details?
Content includes some harsh profanity, brief mentions of suicide and torture (flashbacks, stories). It’s honestly kind of hard to rate this but after a reread I may have a better verdict.
Ever felt compelled to move somewhere new, somewhere foreign, unexpectedly? Our unnamed narrator did and here he tells us his story of how he got his apartment a few weeks after he moved to Europe. May not seem enticing, but it kind of is. The city is cold and frozen, he does not know the language, and only has an acquaintance who is helping him find a place. Throughout the day he shares glimpses of his past in the military and as a civilian contractor, giving reflections on his life and where he’s at now.
The writing is very unique as there are no chapters, it’s just one continuous flow, and there is very little dialogue (and what we do get is not in quotations). Very descriptive, I felt like I was there walking the snowy streets, sitting in the warm and crowded cafes. Whenever he talks about riding the trains and being in the stations, it reminded me of when I lived in DC and daily rode the metro. There were some random moments in this but over the course of a day, how often do we experience random moments, have little conversations, recall old memories, and notice odd details?
Content includes some harsh profanity, brief mentions of suicide and torture (flashbacks, stories). It’s honestly kind of hard to rate this but after a reread I may have a better verdict.
October 9, 2017
Some of the 5-star reviews for this book are so eloquent and spot-on that there's not much I say that will probably compare to those, so I'll be quick...
If you've read the excerpt and any of the reviews you know that basic premise: one-day search of an apartment in unnamed European city by former Navy officer with newfound female friend.
But this book is so much more than that.
The author manages to weave in pieces of the main character's past, both recent past and far past, in what, I think, are seamless transitions from scenes set in the present. It's in these flashbacks that we learn more of who he is and why he is there, and where Greg Baxter manages to add wonderful lessons about art and culture.
Art history: perpsective - when and how it started to enter art, how some culture's art handled it before humans fully understood it
Architecture - the emergence of Baroque from Renaissance
Bach's Chaconne and why it's considered the greatest piece of music for solo violin ever created and for that matter, how it elevated the violin to the most popular western instrument
And even a theory of humanism.
That's where the brilliance of this book lies. It's a short book and Baxter manages to give a portrait of a man who is clearly suffering some sort of PTSD from the trauma of war, one who is trying to escape the things he saw and did (not what you may think), while giving the reader wonderful art, history and cultural information.
The mix of character study and cultural history was a win for me.
If you've read the excerpt and any of the reviews you know that basic premise: one-day search of an apartment in unnamed European city by former Navy officer with newfound female friend.
But this book is so much more than that.
The author manages to weave in pieces of the main character's past, both recent past and far past, in what, I think, are seamless transitions from scenes set in the present. It's in these flashbacks that we learn more of who he is and why he is there, and where Greg Baxter manages to add wonderful lessons about art and culture.
Art history: perpsective - when and how it started to enter art, how some culture's art handled it before humans fully understood it
Architecture - the emergence of Baroque from Renaissance
Bach's Chaconne and why it's considered the greatest piece of music for solo violin ever created and for that matter, how it elevated the violin to the most popular western instrument
And even a theory of humanism.
That's where the brilliance of this book lies. It's a short book and Baxter manages to give a portrait of a man who is clearly suffering some sort of PTSD from the trauma of war, one who is trying to escape the things he saw and did (not what you may think), while giving the reader wonderful art, history and cultural information.
The mix of character study and cultural history was a win for me.
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