Agency 3

Three novellas, Teresa Carmody's Today Must Be Sunday, Kim Chinquee'sI Thought of England, and Allison Pitinii Davis'sBusiness, unique in style and narrative, deal with longing, loneliness, fear, and the relationships their characters make, and break, on their way to something like peace, if not happiness. Entering and abandoning social contracts and expectations across the country in the pursuit of the somewhat ethereal notion of contentment, these stories highlight the struggles of women across American cultural eras, aremd only with their ability to think and to act. These three novellas describe the harrowing, soul-rattling actions and choices made by women in the pursuit of defining their lives.

Carmody'sToday Must Be Sunday follows a young woman-white, queer, working class-from her childhood home in Michigan to seven other states, where she lives for shorter (six weeks) or longer (thirteen years) periods of time. The narrator's movement is the book's unfolding, and asa feminist, she brings a critical phenomenological approach to her observations. She knows that she is reading the world through her particular embodied experience, even as her body arrives into a place amidst a series of preconceptions and historical events.

Chinquee'sI Thought of England, a novella-in-flashes, follows a woman's journey in a new location (for her career) after being a single mom for eighteen years. A recent empty-nester, she falls into a community of competitive runners. Growing up on a family dairy farm, getting married then divorced early while in the military, living around the world, she carries her past with her through her running, the men she runs with, and the complications that come with them on her way to defining herself as either lonesome . . . or free.

In Business, celebrated poet Allison Davis's prose debut,Alexa's family owns an industrial laundry service. Wracked by guilt for rebelling against the family coda, Alexa stays on at the laundry on weekends, while working a factory job during the week. One night, she sleeps with a handsome Jewish boy who is engaged to Lia Mazur, the daughter of another immigrant family that owns a hotel. Predetermined gender roles and familial obligations, accompanied by an impending sense of doom for the city, attempt to thwart these women. How they go about accepting, denying, or gaming these systems will define the individuals they are to become.