Nowadays and Lonelier

Book excerpt: For fans of Heather O'Neill's Daydreams of Angels, Otessa Moshfegh's Homesick for Another World, and Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties, Nowadays and Lonelier features a cascade of characters seeking connection in the darkest alleyways and meaning in the mundane. In these pages, a ballet dancer navigates complex family ties that are frayed by addiction; a young girl discovers sex and sexuality in the nineties in an impoverished urban center; a lover sojourns in Egypt and exacts an unexpected revenge; and a barista and a painter weather an apartment fire in Montreal. The collection is concerned with the contrast experienced by working- and middle-class millennials, between access to education and art compared to a relative lack of access to secure jobs and housing--and how these conditions leave many straddling a world where mental health, addictions, and sex work are daily realities as they try to carve out space for themselves in times that are increasingly alienating. Nowadays and Lonelier, Carmella Gray-Cosgrove's debut story collection, features vivid portraits of unsure yet hopeful people struggling to find a good life in a hard world.