The Apartment

April 24, 2023
Menéndez (Adios, Happy Homeland!) explores the lives of a Miami apartment’s tenants over 70 years in her ambitious if diffuse latest. In 1942, a hopeful new bride from San Antonio moves into 2B at the Helena, where her dreams of marital bliss are quashed by wartime tensions and abuse from her Army major husband. Menéndez then jumps to 1963, when Eugenio, a Cuban classical pianist reduced to playing weddings and nursing home gigs, has lived in 2B for the past 11 years. Eugenio contemplates his love of music after he hears about the death of a great Cuban composer. In 1972, a Vietnam War vet lives there among termite-eaten furniture left from previous tenants, his “head on fire” from memories of combat. And in 2010, 40-year-old Pilar packs up the place to move back in with her parents, unable to afford the spiking rent and calling herself a “victim of the financial crisis.” Taking Pilar’s place is a young Cuban refugee, whose fate impacts other tenants in surprising ways. A late foray into magical realism feels a bit hackneyed, and some of the time periods are more evocatively described than others. Still, Menéndez’s nesting-doll narrative serves as a thoughtful meditation on the transient nature of home. Despite its flaws, this is worth a look.