The Apartment (Wait a Minute)

The house is too large and the rent is too expensive for the protagonist of this story. And he goes from being the only inhabitant to the roommate of five other people, who are occasionally joined by strangers, friends of friends, who camp at his place for a few nights. Each of them has different characteristics. Each of them is a little bit eccentric. The protagonist recounts in the first person some events that happened to him in the early nineties. He is an aspiring writer who does very little to achieve his goals. He is looking for temporary jobs to pay the bills and never manages to get his telephone line activated. Through his eyes and words, we discover the stories and desires of his roommates, who are initially described as inconclusive. Thus, we meet the Swedish Karin, with whom we begin an apparently idyllic relationship. Pasolo, a stone sculptor, about whom completely different stories are told. Then there are Massia, who is trying to be a musician, Jovanna and Corintia, who design clothes, Tiziana, who is perhaps Pasolo's sister or ex-girlfriend. And "Curt," a stranger, who always puts the protagonist in a bad mood even without saying anything. In L'appartamento, Giuseppe Cristiano did not want to talk only about living together, about the oddities and misadventures of a group of people. It is a novel of confrontation with reality, in which not everything is as it really seems, because sometimes the truth imagined and described is only the fruit of one's own fears.