'The Apartment' follows the residents of a Miami Beach building over decades

NPR's Book of the Day

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Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

Ana Menéndez's novel The Apartment starts decades – maybe centuries – before the art deco building named The Helena is built in South Beach, and ends eons into the future. What takes place in apartment 2B in the in-between is where her story lives. From a Cuban concert pianist to a refugee, Menéndez dives into who lives at The Helena and how their time there shapes them. In today's episode, she tells NPR's Ari Shapiro why she wanted time to become its own character in the book, which she spent more than a decade writing.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there, this is Book of the Day from NPR. I'm Chloe Veltman. There's a long tradition of novels where much of the action unfolds in someone's home. Take Howard's End by E.M. Forster or Ian McEwen's The Cement Garden. Anna Menendez's bitter sweet new book, The Apartment, Follow Suit. The novel tracks the lives of the inhabitants of a
0:21.7	Miami apartment over the years. As the writer explains in an interview with NPR's Ari Shapiro,
0:27.6	the book begins with a scene that takes the reader back to the pre-colonial age, way before the
0:32.1	apartment building ever existed. She says she hopes this late stage literary move almost makes time seem like a character in the narrative.
0:40.8	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:45.6	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, sources and methods.
0:52.2	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,
0:55.9	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
0:59.8	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:04.9	In 1940, construction workers in Miami Beach laid the groundwork for an art deco building called the Helena.
1:12.7	Over the decades, apartment to be would house painters and musicians, army men, and refugees.
1:19.0	The building and the people who live in it all spring from the imagination of Anna Menendez.
1:24.0	She's the author of the new book, The Apartment.
1:26.8	Welcome to All Things Considered. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here.'s the author of the new book, The Apartment. Welcome to All Things Considered.
1:28.1	Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here. Before the apartment at the center of your novel exists,
1:33.2	you introduce us in the book's opening pages to an indigenous woman collecting sea turtle eggs.
1:39.1	Will you read from the end of this introduction, this prologue?
1:45.5	Yes, I'd love to.
1:49.8	Here where the woman disturbs the burrowing creatures,
1:54.2	in this same patch where she pauses to listen to the sea's roar,
1:58.2	many years from now, workers will cut a path by hand,
2:00.4	a street will cover the wound. A man named William will buy a plot,
	...

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