Doorman »

Arenas’s first work set in the United States breaks new ground with the story of a young Cuban refugee who becomes a doorman at a luxury apartment building. Oddly alienated from the tenants, he is seduced by their pets, who are determined to revolt against humans and human society.

Publishers Weekly

Cuban novelist Arenas's (Old Rosa ) exquisitely wrought surreal fantasy is a sardonic Swiftian parable on human cruelty and the impulse to flee from freedom. Juan, a Cuban refugee and overzealous doorman at a Manhattan luxury building, wants to help each tenant open the ``door to true happiness.'' But the tenants resist enlightenment. Among them are an oddball pastor who touches or caresses everyone he meets; the inventor of the neon clothespin and the totally prosthetic body; a miserly retired actress who walks a stuffed dog every evening; two nearly identical gay lovers; and a suicidal woman whose fiance Juan pretends to be. All of the tenants have pets--dogs, cats, a rattlesnake, an orangutang, parrots, turtles, a trained bear, etc.--which mirror their personal foibles. As the animals warily befriend Juan and air their views on the dangerous human species, his conversations with the menagerie get him committed to a mental hospital. A fabulist of elegant invention, Arenas, who died last December, delivers a ferocious indictment of the human race.