Is this it? Is this all there is? The men and women who populate Sue Mell's vital and exciting collection of stories, A New Day, are looking for the right experience and are always coming up short. It's hard to call them characters because they and their friends, lovers, employers, and family members, feel as though they were plucked whole out of a past that is still in motion somewhere, tucked in a hidden fold of time. Set in a pre-gentrified Manhattan of affordable apartments it's possible, now, to feel nostalgic for, their lives overlap in this vivid evocation of a place and an era. The stories are grouped around three female characters we get to know intimately and linked tangentially in surprising ways across the whole collection. A central figure in one story is someone’s employer in another. The infant that cries in the background of an angry phone conversation in one story is later, the teenage girl who pushes her father to do the right thing when a woman passes out in front of them in the park. This overlapping and cris-crossing of lives is just one of the many pleasures in stories that exert a magnetic force from the first line to the last. And that final line, every time without fail, creates a finish that, with just the right flourish, settles a lid down gently, yet leaves room for steam to escape.

But more than anything, what Sue Mell does best is listen. She can reproduce, in pitch perfect tones, off-hand remarks that reveal, in an instant, exactly what the speaker is struggling with.

"Beats the crap out of me," (85) Miguel tells the cab driver who has asked him where he wants to go. Miguel has just swept out of the house, leaving a woman he feels has slighted not only him, but the memory of his best buddy.

Or this, the sleazy endearment uttered by a good-looking, coked-up boss to the female assistant who’s attracted to him, but feels she shouldn't be, and so offers tepid refusals to his come-on.

Kind of early in the evening for a booty call," she says. "Not that I don't—God knows, I want to—but you...it's just..."

"Just what, puppet?" he says, pulling her closer (137).

Puppet! An X-ray couldn't reveal this guy any more clearly.

All of this is great fun, but it's in the extended dialogue where the unexpected happens as two people jostle verbally, trying to find common ground, or justify their behavior, or explain their feelings. All three are in play in a wonderful repartee between brothers who don't see one another very often, even though they live in the same city and both work in the world of commercial photography.

Elliot wants to know why Mick dropped by, so he first tries their usual banter and then finally says, "So you're not dying," which is an appropriate question because Mick has been through rehab twice, then a nasty divorce, and has a wife who makes it difficult to see his daughter.

"Not that I know of."

"What are you doing here then?"

"I have to be dying to stop by?"

Elliot put his hands to his face and shook his head.

"Okay, okay," said Mick. "I really don't know." He wiped the egg-roll through a pool of duck sauce, then set it back down on the paper plate. "My life feels...strange. Dislocated, somehow. I just wanted to see you."

"Fine, then. Here I am. Just don't touch my duvet with those greasy fingers."

At this point, the reader knows Mick isn't confident talking about his feelings, and especially not to Elliot, and it's not clear, from Elliot's first response, if he understands that his brother is looking for just a tiny bit of connection and support. But his ending line, impersonating an obsessive homemaker is, first, amusing because they're in Elliot's below the sidewalk studio apartment, sitting on his single bed sharing Chinese take-out, and second, endearing because it gives Mick exactly what he needs, a throw-back to a shared incident. That bit of connection sets him up for more positive rumination once he's alone, and out of that, Mick's next plan grows organically. The reader is right there with him because she's watched the idea develop from the moment Mick taps at Elliot's window.

A New Day provides an artful mix of humor and pathos; it's about people who, despite failure and disappointment, are optimistic enough to try it again. Maybe just turning the corner? Things will look better?

Mell, Sue. A New Day. Berkeley: She Writes Press, 2024.

Filed under: How extended dialogue can prepare for a moment of decision