Dear Great Book Guru,
Happy New Year to you and please, please help me keep my New Year’s
resolution- I want to read one book a week. With all the wonderful things
happening in Sea Cliff, I do find it hard to find the time so I need something
short but worthwhile to start 2014 off right.
Resolute Reader
Dear Resolute, How admirable of you and indeed I do have a
recommendation that should work very well for you: THE APARTMENT by Greg Baxter. This debut novel is set on a cold December
day in an unnamed East European city- some reviewers suggest Prague, others
Istanbul, while the author insists it’s an amalgam of many cities. The first
person narrator is a forty-one year-old American who has become wealthy from
profiteering during the Iraq War. We follow him as he travels around the city
in search of an apartment- a new home. He is accompanied by a young real estate agent
and various friends of hers. Everything our American sees is colored by his
past- with its memories of violence, camaraderie, guilt, isolation, alienation. We come to realize that this is a deeply
political book, a study of America and its place in the 21stcentury
. Beautifully written, very provocative, and
less than 200 pages, this book is definitely the way to start the new year!