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Bill Cotter 1st edit/1 print The Parallel Apartments First Edition 2014 [Hardcover] Cotter, Bill [Hardcover] Cotter, Bill
extremely rare,very good condition
- GenresFiction
Hardcover
First published February 11, 2014
11 people are currently reading
930 people want to read
About the author
Bill Cotter
25 books43 followersBill Cotter was born in Dallas in 1964, and has labored as an antiquarian book dealer and restorer since 2000. He presently lives in Austin with his girlfriend, the poet Annie La Ganga, and Travis, an inextinguishable roach who divides his time between the shower and the silverware drawer.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
August 19, 2014
(4.5 stars) The Parallel Apartments is a literary tightwire act executed almost flawlessly. Author Bill Cotter isn’t just a sure handed storyteller…he’s cocky. He tosses off words long withered from disuse within the pages of an unabridged OED. He ratchets up the absurdity level and challenges you to get off the ride. He offers up the most whacked-out rogue’s gallery of deeply flawed (and frequently pitiful) characters and dares you to care about them.
Bravo, Bill Cotter. You pulled it off. The Parallel Apartments is a sui generis farcical exploration of personal identity, delivered with delightful descriptive specificity, uncommon brio and unexpected compassion.
The story centers on three generations of women, Charlotte, her daughter Livia and Justine, Livia's daughter, and how their personal “sins” are not just revisited on their offspring, but create the very form their lives will take. Cotter jumps around in time from Charlotte’s 1950’s youth, depicted as mostly realistic and recognizable, to 2005, which is presented as a funhouse mirror version of our reality. The world in The Parallel Apartments becomes increasingly absurd and grotesque, the supporting characters more outrageous. Beyond providing reliable humor (ranging from broad, to sly, to cutting), this absurdity helps bring to the forefront the humanity and universality of Charlotte, Livia and Justine’s wants, desires, and fears. Regardless of how strange or awful or wonderfully weird or libertine the world becomes, our brains, bodies and egos need expression and protection.
The cover image features a set of matryoshka nesting dolls, an object revisited in the book's coda. The Parallel Apartments explores how the previous generations—in their experiences and mistakes—create the very shape we start out seeing the world. With each passing generation, even while the world changes and becomes more rife with possibilities, we’re always laded with the accumulated baggage of past generations. In this way, they create the very shape of the walls, barriers, and hurdles we strike out against. Personal rebellion is intrinsically defined by the very thing we rebel against. The book’s secondary characters play out this theme in various bizarre and delightfully unexpected ways.
My enthusiasm for The Parallel Apartments is tempered by the personal allowance that I may have a limited reading of the sexual politics inherent in the story. It takes confidence, nerve... hubris ...for Bill Cotter to craft a multi-generational female-driven story that traffics so heavily (yet largely implicitly) in female sexuality. Prostitution, miscarriage, sexual promiscuity, pregnancy fears and gender-based power dynamics all play significant roles in the story. Someone with a more sharply honed feminist reading may (rightly) find Cotter's representations naïve, inaccurate, outright dismissive or worse. I found Cotter's depiction of the modern world (and the recent past to a lesser extent) as absurd and grotesque an effective distancing technique, highlighting the goodness and humanity (with all its flaws) in Charlotte, Livia and Justine. Cotter is never cruel to them, and provides them all with a relatively full-fleshed humanity. They are not perfect, they have made terrible mistakes, but they all have earned their dignity and deserve our compassion, care and even respect. That's my reading and I would very much be interested in an opposing or more nuanced reading.
From the first page of The Parallel Apartments, author Bill Cotter puts on an Elvis jumpsuit replete with blinking neon lights, steps to the mic and announces that he’s going to drive his urine-powered mini-bike—blindfolded—to victory in the Indianapolis 500. It’s bold, hubristic, full of foolish confidence, likely regrettable, but attention-grabbing for sure. By the time I finished The Parallel Apartments, I’d experienced every emotional stage a spectator would in witnessing this scenario.
“What?”…
”Really?”
“C’mon…”
”Hmmm…”
“Wow”…
“This is awesome, but no way he can pull this off.”
”Oh man, if he can pull this off…”
“I’ve never seen anything like this!”
“Please! Just don’t crash down the stretch.”
“YES!”
Bill Cotter deserves the trophy and accolades, but the readers of The Parallel Apartments are the winners.
Bravo, Bill Cotter. You pulled it off. The Parallel Apartments is a sui generis farcical exploration of personal identity, delivered with delightful descriptive specificity, uncommon brio and unexpected compassion.
The story centers on three generations of women, Charlotte, her daughter Livia and Justine, Livia's daughter, and how their personal “sins” are not just revisited on their offspring, but create the very form their lives will take. Cotter jumps around in time from Charlotte’s 1950’s youth, depicted as mostly realistic and recognizable, to 2005, which is presented as a funhouse mirror version of our reality. The world in The Parallel Apartments becomes increasingly absurd and grotesque, the supporting characters more outrageous. Beyond providing reliable humor (ranging from broad, to sly, to cutting), this absurdity helps bring to the forefront the humanity and universality of Charlotte, Livia and Justine’s wants, desires, and fears. Regardless of how strange or awful or wonderfully weird or libertine the world becomes, our brains, bodies and egos need expression and protection.
The cover image features a set of matryoshka nesting dolls, an object revisited in the book's coda. The Parallel Apartments explores how the previous generations—in their experiences and mistakes—create the very shape we start out seeing the world. With each passing generation, even while the world changes and becomes more rife with possibilities, we’re always laded with the accumulated baggage of past generations. In this way, they create the very shape of the walls, barriers, and hurdles we strike out against. Personal rebellion is intrinsically defined by the very thing we rebel against. The book’s secondary characters play out this theme in various bizarre and delightfully unexpected ways.
My enthusiasm for The Parallel Apartments is tempered by the personal allowance that I may have a limited reading of the sexual politics inherent in the story. It takes confidence, nerve... hubris ...for Bill Cotter to craft a multi-generational female-driven story that traffics so heavily (yet largely implicitly) in female sexuality. Prostitution, miscarriage, sexual promiscuity, pregnancy fears and gender-based power dynamics all play significant roles in the story. Someone with a more sharply honed feminist reading may (rightly) find Cotter's representations naïve, inaccurate, outright dismissive or worse. I found Cotter's depiction of the modern world (and the recent past to a lesser extent) as absurd and grotesque an effective distancing technique, highlighting the goodness and humanity (with all its flaws) in Charlotte, Livia and Justine. Cotter is never cruel to them, and provides them all with a relatively full-fleshed humanity. They are not perfect, they have made terrible mistakes, but they all have earned their dignity and deserve our compassion, care and even respect. That's my reading and I would very much be interested in an opposing or more nuanced reading.
From the first page of The Parallel Apartments, author Bill Cotter puts on an Elvis jumpsuit replete with blinking neon lights, steps to the mic and announces that he’s going to drive his urine-powered mini-bike—blindfolded—to victory in the Indianapolis 500. It’s bold, hubristic, full of foolish confidence, likely regrettable, but attention-grabbing for sure. By the time I finished The Parallel Apartments, I’d experienced every emotional stage a spectator would in witnessing this scenario.
“What?”…
”Really?”
“C’mon…”
”Hmmm…”
“Wow”…
“This is awesome, but no way he can pull this off.”
”Oh man, if he can pull this off…”
“I’ve never seen anything like this!”
“Please! Just don’t crash down the stretch.”
“YES!”
Bill Cotter deserves the trophy and accolades, but the readers of The Parallel Apartments are the winners.
March 16, 2014
It's difficult to get my head around everything I felt reading this book, and I'll try anyway. The Parallel Apartments is dazzling. Justine is a pregnant 30-something, living in NYC, who comes back home to Austin. Reading just that tiny bit of the plot was enough for me to commit to the book, which it doesn't appear too many people have read and reviewed yet.
There are a healthy handful of characters whose story lines all come together, all connected via the titled Parallel Apartments, but never in a contrived way. I am SO GLAD I read this on Kindle, because there were enough words I didn't know that I relied on the built-in dictionary feature extensively. On one hand, I'm always happy to learn new words; on the other hand, the extent to which the author used unusual (and maybe unnecessarily specific) vocabulary was a bit over-the-top for me. It's possible every character had a divan -- which is a word I did know -- but still. Couldn't some of the characters have couches or sofas? Final picky point: I found a few factual inconsistencies, like a suggestion to swing by Old Navy in 1988, when I'm pretty sure Old Navy wasn't around till 1994. And some landmarks and routes about town didn't make sense and may not actually be possible. I had to remind myself this is fiction and the author is allowed to simply be inspired by reality, and create what he wants in his novel! Compared to every other novel I've read in the last 3 years, there is a lot of sex, thinking about sex, talking about sex, exploration of sex that's way beyond a mainstream perspective. And there was so much good about the book that I kept reading even when I found myself beyond my comfort zone.
Because everything else about this big ol' book, which is A LOT, was fantastic for me. Character development is excellent, deep, thorough. He writes both male and female characters with a very believable hand. All the sex in the book is less about gratuitous sex and more of a challenge to what we think we know about sexuality. As I mentioned earlier, the plot is sweeping, and extends wide with many characters, but not once did I imagine the author standing over a storyboard, meticulously moving pins and post-it notes, figuring out how he would write an arc to sweep from Point F to Point G -- it was organic, natural, interesting, energetic. There is drama, and there is melodrama, and there is so much humor, thank heaven, to add levity and perspective to the drama. I think there were 3 big LOL moments, holding my stomach, including a scene at a concert and another scene in a police car.
Bill Cotter writes in the third person as the unseen narrator, with a voice his own so engaging and compelling, witty and truthful, sharp, unrelenting. It adds a level of energy and flow to the book that is joyful to experience. Only one other author, Jonathan Safran Foer, has delivered this for me, and now I will have to get Cotter's previous novel for enthusiastic consumption.
After a bunch of disappointments this year, I'm back in the fiction game.
There are a healthy handful of characters whose story lines all come together, all connected via the titled Parallel Apartments, but never in a contrived way. I am SO GLAD I read this on Kindle, because there were enough words I didn't know that I relied on the built-in dictionary feature extensively. On one hand, I'm always happy to learn new words; on the other hand, the extent to which the author used unusual (and maybe unnecessarily specific) vocabulary was a bit over-the-top for me. It's possible every character had a divan -- which is a word I did know -- but still. Couldn't some of the characters have couches or sofas? Final picky point: I found a few factual inconsistencies, like a suggestion to swing by Old Navy in 1988, when I'm pretty sure Old Navy wasn't around till 1994. And some landmarks and routes about town didn't make sense and may not actually be possible. I had to remind myself this is fiction and the author is allowed to simply be inspired by reality, and create what he wants in his novel! Compared to every other novel I've read in the last 3 years, there is a lot of sex, thinking about sex, talking about sex, exploration of sex that's way beyond a mainstream perspective. And there was so much good about the book that I kept reading even when I found myself beyond my comfort zone.
Because everything else about this big ol' book, which is A LOT, was fantastic for me. Character development is excellent, deep, thorough. He writes both male and female characters with a very believable hand. All the sex in the book is less about gratuitous sex and more of a challenge to what we think we know about sexuality. As I mentioned earlier, the plot is sweeping, and extends wide with many characters, but not once did I imagine the author standing over a storyboard, meticulously moving pins and post-it notes, figuring out how he would write an arc to sweep from Point F to Point G -- it was organic, natural, interesting, energetic. There is drama, and there is melodrama, and there is so much humor, thank heaven, to add levity and perspective to the drama. I think there were 3 big LOL moments, holding my stomach, including a scene at a concert and another scene in a police car.
Bill Cotter writes in the third person as the unseen narrator, with a voice his own so engaging and compelling, witty and truthful, sharp, unrelenting. It adds a level of energy and flow to the book that is joyful to experience. Only one other author, Jonathan Safran Foer, has delivered this for me, and now I will have to get Cotter's previous novel for enthusiastic consumption.
After a bunch of disappointments this year, I'm back in the fiction game.
Read
June 9, 2014http://www.full-stop.net/2014/02/11/r...
Review by Emma Schneider
Inventive and hilarious, The Parallel Apartments delights in the oddities of people and language. Inhabiting a mesmerizing and unnerving kaleidoscope world, Bill Cotter’s vivid characters turn “extreme” into the new normal. In this bizarre, yet consistent universe, a bullied-child-turned-sociopath lives next door to an opera singer whose psychotic desire for a child drives her to actions even Wagner wouldn’t stage. Cotter’s novel is remarkable in the sympathetic attention it gives to its characters, no matter what their motivations. By allowing these drives to play out, The Parallel Apartments holds true to the world it has created, even when it leads to brutal results.
The book primarily unpacks the estranged, lie-ridden family of Justine Moppett. Like a set of Russian nesting dolls, the women in Justine’s family contain multitudes. Shifting between the stories of Justine, her mother, and her grandmother, The Parallel Apartments considers how people perpetuate themselves in both their offspring and their stories. The female characters dominate The Parallel Apartments, each obsessing over the possibility of pregnancy. Most of the novel’s women try desperately not to become pregnant, using everything from an ill-advised triple layer of condoms to a blessedly infertile sexbot as preventive measures. The novel’s title, then, does not just represent the intertwining lives of several unusual tenants in the Parallel Apartments complex. It also describes the parallel lives of one person growing inside the body of another. Unlike most parallel lines, however, these lives repeatedly, bizarrely, and dramatically intersect.
Read the rest here: http://www.full-stop.net/2014/02/11/r...
Review by Emma Schneider
Inventive and hilarious, The Parallel Apartments delights in the oddities of people and language. Inhabiting a mesmerizing and unnerving kaleidoscope world, Bill Cotter’s vivid characters turn “extreme” into the new normal. In this bizarre, yet consistent universe, a bullied-child-turned-sociopath lives next door to an opera singer whose psychotic desire for a child drives her to actions even Wagner wouldn’t stage. Cotter’s novel is remarkable in the sympathetic attention it gives to its characters, no matter what their motivations. By allowing these drives to play out, The Parallel Apartments holds true to the world it has created, even when it leads to brutal results.
The book primarily unpacks the estranged, lie-ridden family of Justine Moppett. Like a set of Russian nesting dolls, the women in Justine’s family contain multitudes. Shifting between the stories of Justine, her mother, and her grandmother, The Parallel Apartments considers how people perpetuate themselves in both their offspring and their stories. The female characters dominate The Parallel Apartments, each obsessing over the possibility of pregnancy. Most of the novel’s women try desperately not to become pregnant, using everything from an ill-advised triple layer of condoms to a blessedly infertile sexbot as preventive measures. The novel’s title, then, does not just represent the intertwining lives of several unusual tenants in the Parallel Apartments complex. It also describes the parallel lives of one person growing inside the body of another. Unlike most parallel lines, however, these lives repeatedly, bizarrely, and dramatically intersect.
Read the rest here: http://www.full-stop.net/2014/02/11/r...
May 26, 2014
I was thoroughly entertained! And kept telling friends about various strange characters and twists in the story. Quirky doesn't quite explain it...But I have never read anything like it! By the end of this long adventure, I loved all the characters, not because they were good, but because I knew them so well and cared so much. Just try it!
October 29, 2014
Perhaps if I had been able to stand it long enough to get farther into the book, I might have found there was something redeeming about it. You can tell the author thinks he has something challenging to say about life in general and sexual politics in particular, but it just seemed debasing and depressing to read it.
February 26, 2018
a terrible book by a smug man who knows a lot of big words but lacks the sense of empathy needed to write a decent story.
October 5, 2020
What a gut punch. This is hilarious and propulsive, the dialog just shoving you along page after page. Eventually you realize the humor is a necessary balance, because otherwise you're just crying the entire time. The STRENGTH of these women; the absolutely planet-swallowing determination. I feel beat up and hugged, I am despaired and inspired.
Anyway, yeah, why not, you should maybe read this book.
Anyway, yeah, why not, you should maybe read this book.
May 31, 2019
Very interesting book, extremely well written (the language is captivating). Wish there was more development with supporting characters. A book I would like to read again in a couple of years.
March 16, 2025
I don’t think AI could have come up with a twisted @ss story. It was such a ride, with the Austin nastalgia before the boom. I am ready to read another story.
December 23, 2021
Enjoyed the writing, but I felt it was too long. Toward the end I had started to lose steam and interest in the characters.
June 3, 2014
The core of this book is truly moving, and it's framed with masterful prose. Cotter is a linguist in the grand tradition of prosody, and he showcases his talents with child-like aplomb. The obvious comparisons for The Parallel Apartments are A Confederacy of Dunces and Catch-22, both of which share the same sense of madcap over-the-toppedness. Cotter's particular brand of exuberance focuses on sexuality, which makes this not a book for the prudish. Even I, in the 99th percentile of non-prudes, was given pause a couple times at the gratuity. Cotter neither celebrates nor condemns his characters' actions, though I wonder if their antics distract from the true resonance of the heart of the story. Nevertheless, it's a solid read for anyone with socially liberal inclinations.
September 8, 2014
I used to live in NYC and currently live in Austin and loved being able to picture all the landmarks that were mentioned.
I enjoyed Cotter's writing style - somewhat chaotic with run on sentences full of metaphor and imagery - but I couldn't finish the book. I made it maybe 1/4 through. When I read books and watch movies I can't help but have empathy for the characters; I imagine myself in their place and feel what they are feeling whether I want to or not. These feelings can stick with me even while I'm not reading. The characters in this book are all so disturbed that "putting myself in their shoes" was not a healthy place to be.
I enjoyed Cotter's writing style - somewhat chaotic with run on sentences full of metaphor and imagery - but I couldn't finish the book. I made it maybe 1/4 through. When I read books and watch movies I can't help but have empathy for the characters; I imagine myself in their place and feel what they are feeling whether I want to or not. These feelings can stick with me even while I'm not reading. The characters in this book are all so disturbed that "putting myself in their shoes" was not a healthy place to be.
April 22, 2014
Bill Cotter brings us another crazy book with memorable characters delivered in a labyrinth plot. McSweeney's publishes another gem, with their book enthusiast's love of texture and cover art. The cover's nesting dolls theme is a perfect visual representation of Cotter's story. Reading this, I am reminded of Showtime's Shameless, though The Parallel Apartments is even more shocking, more endearing, more can't-keep-eyes-averted train wreck. If you've read his other book, Fever Chart, this new adventure carries the same addictive chaos. It's a fun read that will leave you sympathizing with the horribly endearing cast.
May 27, 2014
I enjoyed this book and I liked the premise a lot. I would have likes it to be a more surface review of all the tenants in the apartments, a la Tales of the City, or a more in depth view of the three generations of ladies (Charlotte, Livia, Justine). It tried to be a little bit of both and that was where it struggled some. Either direction, fully explored, would have been great for the reader. All that said, I was eager to pick up the book every day and I did enjoy the story. I would certainly read this author again.
August 6, 2016
The subject matter isn’t for everyone. The book opens with marital rape, there’s some accidental incest, and a very nasty would-be serial killer graces several chapters. If you can get past that, though, you’ll find a well-crafted—if deranged—novel. At 500 pages, it initially feels like an undertaking. The cast of characters alone would be hell to manage in another’s hands. I loved this winding, weird story, though, and felt satisfied by its end.
July 11, 2014
I debated several times just to not both finishing this book. The watching a train/auto wreck analogy is pretty accurate. It seemed contrived. Like Cotter wanted to have a character for a failed serial killer, and the whole Rance storyline... why? So Murphy's only "successful" murder could be a robot? The matryoshka doll at the end... where did Justine get it and was it just used at the end to be able to push the point of the cover. I left feeling... meh...
August 11, 2016
Quirky, which I like. If you like quirky, off-beat funny, with a lot of different characters, and you are willing to put the time in, this book is worth it. I loved the last quarter of the book, some of the first parts of the book felt a little bit like work, but Cotter did have a lot of groundwork to lay, it's no wonder at times it felt a little slow.
June 25, 2014
I can't in good conscience recommend this book because of the amount of sex in it, casual and constant ... I skipped page after page. The writing is absurd and at times grotesque - at the same time communicating real desires and fears. By the end I was invested in the surreal characters and appreciated the twists and turns and connections. But, ehhh
July 6, 2014
this book was compelling like a highway fatality. I had a hard time putting it down, and while I really enjoyed the writing style, I actually found myself wondering "why am I so engaged in this book?". While I would be hard pressed to find a concrete reason to recommend it, I did enjoy it. and I guess for a 500 page book, that in itself is a recommendation.
May 27, 2015
Interesting group of characters. that's kind of an understatement. portions of this book were so poetic while other parts made me make sure the blinds were pulled down just in case someone could see what i was reading. can't wait to read it again.
July 31, 2014
Myra McIlvain Bill Cotter's characters are bazaar and pitiful and so well-formed that it's hard to stop reading. He is a master of language, which creates great images and at times gets in the way of the story. I ended up caring for everyone of his over the top personalities. Enjoyable read.
November 13, 2016
A wonderfully devastating story of people trying to cope with negative circumstances largely out of their control. None of them do so with much grace or insight. This is a beautifully written story about the real damage pain can bring.
July 29, 2016
It's too weird for me, too many characters, I kept getting confused. It is set in Austin, and it did keep me interested enough to finish it.
April 30, 2014
the ending was not satisfying but overall good
Want to read
March 24, 2014Just read a great article about this in New Orleans Review
October 30, 2014
Like most McSweeney's books, entirely ridiculous, especially toward the end. Had some good moments, though.
March 27, 2014
Entertaining and engaging, but a bit too crazy just to be crazy. I liked his first book more, and I hope he writes another soon.
March 28, 2014
4.5 stars. Wonderful book. Outrageous, with rich and vivid imagery I won't forget anytime soon. Unusually depicted and strong female characters.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews