Tuesday Nights and Wednesday Mornings: A Novella and Stories

by Gwendoline Riley

Plucked from the rainy streets of Manchester, award-winning author Gwendoline Riley’s novella and stories explore the diminishing prospects of true love, the daunting face of God, and the aftereffects of too much time at the bar with a devotion she likens to “lying on a rest room floor saying the Jesus prayer.” In the titular novella, the centerpiece of the collection, we meet Esther, an emotionally capricious twenty-something, part-time struggling writer, and skeptical romantic. Esther loses herself on the streets of Manchester, her adopted home, and explores it with ritual fervor. Although her best friend Donna provides a steady source of emotional succor, Esther adopts a loner’s guise in the face of a broken home and a series of less-than-storybook romances. However, when a young American musician enters her life she comes face-to-face with the intimacy she so desperately seeks. Riley has created a cast of characters that embody both an enigmatic reticence, and a graceful emotionalism. Tuesday Nights and Wednesday Mornings confirms Riley as one of the most talented new voices in fiction today.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Xueqi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actually enjoyed reading this a lot.
Only regret, which was also what I was really keen on seeing even from the beginning, is that she could get hold of herself just a little more in the end.

Will definitely read Gwendoline Riley's books!

Favorite quotes:
“It's true about the running water. You can hear anything you want to in it.”
“I think they're being cheap with their lives, that's why. So they seem ravenous for the worst thoughts I can have.”
“She was learning something important: how to live within the sound of her own slow breathing, how to love the view when her eyes were shut.”
“I don't know what I'm playing at. I feel so romantic and furious all the time.”

And the beautiful ending..
“Writing to you like this is the same as saying your name when I've woken up late, feeling sick, tasting rot. It's pointless, but it happens.”

[Nickie · Rating 2 out of 5]

If every sentence began "The thing about me is..." this book wouldn't read any different. Very little happens besides the narrator describing her life in minute detail because she FEELS everything so much more than everyone else and SEES life as no one else sees it and HATES other people for their failure to EXPERIENCE the world to the very core of their BEING like she does. It's not a surprise when she reveals that she likes The Smiths or mentions in a blase (but-please-look-at-me-I'm-special) way, that she self harms.

It reads like the diary I wrote when I was 16. It's the kind of person that I was then. Probably through to 18/19. Consequently, I don't hate the narrator or Riley (who I presume is writing fairly autobiographically and 24 at time or writing), and I do think that she has a good turn of phrase, who could really write something good if she could ever stop taking everything so very seriously and could add a bit more story to all of that description (which she does in the short stories at the end which I liked much more). And if she could accept that she really isn't that different to everyone else. People as a whole really aren't.

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lately, I've been into books about British 20-something functioning alcoholics, not sure why as I am none of those things. However, the novella "Sick Notes," (which is the focal point of this collection) captures the feeling of a social misfit whose only comfort is in a bottle. She has a couple of brief flings but her self-esteem keeps her from discovering (or caring about) what she is really worth.
The short stories that come after the novella are just pale rehashings of "Sick Notes;" which makes me wonder what kind of debauched life the author is leading and whether she has any other ideas up her sleeve.