title: Tuesday Nights and Wednesday Mornings: A Novella and Stories
author:  Gwendoline Riley 
description: Manchester resident Riley writes fiercely and perceptively about the lives of young women in the British industrial town in this paperback original collection. The first piece, a novella titled "Sicknotes," is narrated by Esther, a 20-something autodidact who lives with her best friend, Donna. The two take delight in post-grunge irony, heavy drinking in public and in private, and inside jokes from literature ("Rise and shine, Raskolnikov," Donna tells Esther), but Esther's directionless frustration and self-consciousness feel as inescapable as the gray factory sky. The other stories, each only a few pages long, show Esther's contemporaries in similar wistful or destructive situations. In "Children," a woman's efforts to leave home are thwarted by her needy father; in the powerful "September," Jayne allows her older boyfriend, Daniel, to take advantage of her money and good will during a night out. The frustrating inertia of these characters, caught in pointless relationships and adolescent habits, is countered by Riley's passionate, gritty prose, which observes the ugly details of Manchester streets and bedrooms with loving originality. But when Esther, at the end of her story, determines she must "burst out of the cold bath... run downstairs in my widow's weeds," it is unclear whether her passion and angst will lead her to a fuller life or merely back to the pub. <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: _Ro_
  
  _1_
  
  Saturday mornings were the best.
  
  On Teiss, Ro’d had to work every day, bending over choba cultures, crawling on
  his hands and knees through narrow tunnels. At the time, he had been primarily
  concerned with what his next meal was going to be, and stewing as he always
  had in hatred of the Balor who forced his tribe to farm for them. Now, on
  Earth, work meant something very different. It meant going to the DETI
  building and sitting in his chair and answering his phone, five days a week,
  eight hours a day including lunch. His evenings were his own, and his
  ‘weekends’.
  
  He liked weekends.
  
  He liked waking up with Maggie still in his arms and no alarms and nowhere
  they had to be. He liked taking his time. He liked not having to rush.
  
  And today was Saturday.
  
  He woke up first, as he usually did. He wasn’t disorientated anymore when he
  woke up and saw painted human walls and a ceiling instead of tunnelled stone.
  After sharing a bed with Maggie for so long, he fell asleep looking f