Apartment

Apartment is set in 1996, when its unnamed narrator is studying in the MFA program at Columbia, paid for by his father. He lives in an illegal sublet of a rent-stabilized apartment in New York and feels guilty about his good fortune. To make up for it, he offers his spare bedroom, rent-free, to Billy, a handsome and gifted classmate from a working-class Midwestern family who is at Columbia on scholarship.

As the semester goes on, the narrator's connection with Billy grows into a friendship unlike anything he has had in a lifetime of keeping acquaintances at a distance. But the cramped shared space and the imbalance of power between them create tensions that neither man expects.

The novel is written in elegant prose and looks back at the Clinton-era roots of issues that remain sensitive today: the spectrums of gender and sexuality, the clash between coastal liberalism and heartland conservatism, and questions of socioeconomic identity and privilege. It is a portrait of one of New York's many lost and disconnected people.