As a young woman painstakingly prepares a romantic homecoming for her girlfriend, their apartment begins to feel more like a tomb when voices, shadows, and hallucinations reveal a truth she has been unwilling to face.

"New to town and delusionally confident, Slide imagined himself living in a glossy building with doormen and sweeping views of the skyline. Instead he's landed in a creaking, stuffy apartment with two roommates: a loping giant who hardly leaves his room, and a weight-obsessed neurotic who keeps no fewer than forty-seven lamps throughout the house, blazing at all hours. Unwilling to accept this fate, Slide--a barber with an opaque past--embarks on...

"Ivy loves living in Applewood Heights. The family's apartment is tiny, and her older sister, Rachel, won't stop grumbling about sharing a room after their old house was lost to foreclosure ... Ivy finds much-needed reassurance, and a boost of confidence, when she starts working with the building superintendent ... Ivy has a natural talent, but she comes to realize that some things--like hurt feelings--are harder to fix than others ... as she tries...

After a two year stint in a state home, the shy and neurotic Elling and his sex-obsessed best friend, Kjell, are released and forced to enter the real world. They find themselves in a state funded apartment in the center of Oslo, told to behave responsibly and act like normal members of society. In time, the two adjust and find oddball ways of coping with society.

Dr. Laing is the newest resident of a luxurious apartment in a high-tech concrete skyscraper whose lofty location places him amongst the upper class. But as power outages become more frequent and building flaws emerge, particularly on the lower floors, the regimented social strata begins to crumble and the building becomes a battlefield in a literal class war.

Chronicles a harrowing descent into madness as Mr. Trelkovsky is subsumed into Simone Choule, a suicide victim whose presence still saturates Mr. Trelkovsky's new apartment.