The thirteen intertwined short stories in Sue Mell’s A New Day are about women you know. None are extraordinary achievers or headline grabbers. Nonetheless, over the course of thirty years, 1982 to 2012, they get and lose jobs, find new lovers, live through breakups and heartache, battle life-threatening illnesses, and bring new life into the world.
Set in both New York City and San Francisco, A New Day introduces their everyday struggles and casts a precise eye and ear on the mundane. The resulting jolt of familiarity sparkles, reminding us that connections and disconnections happen and matter. And, while the exhilaration of second chances underscores some of the stories, Mell reminds us that disappointments and failures are inescapable and need to be met with humor and grace.
The collection opens with a story called “Serendipity.” Set in New York City circa 1989, it recalls a chance meeting between Rachel and Richard, a former art-teacher-turned-lover, now an acquaintance. Although Rachel has lived with Evan for the past three years, her ambivalence about her current relationship is apparent, a feeling that becomes elevated after she sees Richard:
Rachel loved Evan now—that wasn’t the question—it was always that she thought she’d been in love with Richard …The red sign of Village Cigars across the avenue, the yellow taxis clogging up the crosswalk, for a moment these filled her vision like a glowing scrim.
Days later, Rachel remains unsettled by the encounter and musters the courage to phone him. A “careless transgression” follows. Predictably, the assignation raises a host of what-ifs, not only about Richard but about her future with Evan. It’s a powerful, if bittersweet, dive into what it means to choose risk over comfort.
Similar themes are raised in “Lily and Devin,” a story that takes place in 1988. Again there is relationship ambivalence, this time between assistant pastry chef Lily, who works at the Plaza Hotel, and Devin, a former Peace Corps volunteer now employed at his father’s insurance firm. After Marbella, their cat, goes missing, a crisis looms, forcing the pair to grapple with responsibilities that neither are ready for. Compounding their personal dilemmas is New York City’s escalating homeless crisis—a crisis that escalated after the weakening of rent protections and the abrupt conversion of most low-cost Single Room Occupancy (SROs) hotels into luxury housing—and the story offers a window into the unease that permeated the City as the number of unhoused people on the streets began to soar.
“Decorative Arts,” set in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights, 1992, reintroduces Rachel who is now living with Frank. When another ex, Paul, randomly pops by, Lily, Rachel’s oldest friend, is at the apartment waiting to be driven to the hospital where she will have a bone marrow transplant. Everyone is on edge.
“I’d just like five minutes without thinking—even tangentially—of someone dying,” Rachel tells Paul.
As a distraction Paul agrees to take Rachel to the zoo where the verbal parlay moves from the superficial to the substantive, bouncing between the majesty of giraffes to the mystery of the creative process, from recovery from substance abuse to the inevitability of death. As the pair wander through the zoo, tragedy, comedy, and random encounters pose a counterpoint to Rachel’s fear that Lily’s surgery will be unsuccessful and leave her weakened and different. Her need for solace—the comfort of animal majesty—perhaps akin to the decorative work that propels her artistic career and brings elegant designs into upscale homes, is a palpable response to pain, terror, and uncertainty.
A New Day’s Part Two revolves around working-class Emma, an aspiring actor, now waitress, who refuses to give up her dream of being on stage. Despite years of personal and professional failure, a new relationship with Tina blossoms after the restaurant where both work is robbed.
In “All the World’s Not a Stage,” Tina wonders if this new romance is real or is instead a matter of convenience. After all, Emma is homeless. Her stints as a serial house sitter have dried up and her chances of finding an affordable rental are slim to none. Is Emma using her or is there a spark between them? Tina asks herself.
That question is answered in “Saturday, 2:30 AM,” which takes place in 1982, and “Emma Redux,” set in 2012.
“Tina had loved her in a way Emma couldn’t reciprocate,” Mell writes in “Emma Redux.” “Neither of them happy as more than friends, which they’d stayed for a while. That closeness fading as they moved into separate lives, geographic distance dimming and eventually tamping their connection.
The story, a reflective look back, zeroes in on the passage of time and addresses the many disappointments we encounter as we age. Unlike Rachel in Part One, Emma is rooted in New York City. Her connectedness, alongside the section’s nod to once landmark institutions, are a showcase for a city in transition, a reality that is at odds with Emma’s unchanged situation.
The book’s third section centers on Nina and Mick, a charismatic photographer who in 1986 was hired to take photos of several displays at the department store where Nina was then employed. Her job, orchestrating Mick’s after-hours artistry, led to a one-night stand she thought she’d forgotten. But life can be surprising and when the two nearly collide while wandering through Central Park, recognition is immediate, at least for her:
I know you, her body said, as the man met her gaze and quickly looked away. Mick … A bit of debauchery that had cost her her job in the display department of Bloomingdale’s … Nina felt aware of despair for her younger self, not so different from the woman she was now.
As Nina ruminates on this, she faints, an improbable event that forces Mick (who is accompanied by his thirteen-year-old daughter) to come to her aid. Suffice it to say that the denouement is a sweet slice of chance that suggests the possibility of happy endings.
All told, Rachel, Emma, and Nina are diverse white women with varying degrees of privilege. By turns vulnerable and made of steel, they face the slings-and-arrows of family, romance, and work head-on, sometimes with aplomb and sometimes with shaky hands. They’re wholly relatable. This makes A New Day a book to savor. I closed it wishing I could lift a glass with them in a toast to the vagaries of existence.
A New Day, by Sue Mell. She Writes Press, September 2024. 200 pages. $17.99, paper.
Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based freelance writer who writes about books and domestic social issues and policies. She is a frequent contributor to Truthout, The Progressive, Lilith, New Pages, Ms.Magazine, and The Indypendent.
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