The Parallel Apartments

December 2, 2013
Justine Moppett’s life is at a crossroads: unexpectedly pregnant, living in New York with a man she doesn’t love, she swiftly moves home to Austin after learning that her adoptive mother is actually her birth mother. Once settled in a motel room famous for a series of grisly murders, Justine drinks Dr. Pepper, watches reruns of Law and Order, and collages, contemplating her next move. The latest from Cotter (Fever Chart) is a jagged merry-go-round, a nested mystery, vaulting through time and place, allowing the history of Justine’s family—grandmother Charlotte, mother Livia, grandfather Lou, and Lou’s companion, Dot—to come into focus. As Justine inches closer to confronting her mother, she falls for Rose, a local hermaphrodite, who works overtime to bring Justine’s family together. Other residents of Austin with similar desires—babies, recognition, freedom—gradually pop up, as well, eventually colliding with Justine both at the novel’s titular apartment complex, as well as in the narrative’s ugly climax. Cotter has a knack for tone, with scenes shifting from the playful to the downright unsettling. The secrets of Justine’s family are engrossing, even if, at certain moments, the reader proclaims “aha” long before Cotter’s characters. Still, it’s unfortunate that some of the novel’s side stories—Murphy, the wannabe serial killer; Alice, the baby-hungry soprano—don’t feel truly necessary, existing more for the tale’s unpleasant apex than for true narrative reflections of Justine’s tribulations.