Lindsay MacMillan's The Anti-Marriage Pact is an angst-ridden, humorous drama of self-discovery, feminism, and friendship set in contemporary New York City.
"We refused to dull our fabulous edges to fit the Midwest's archaic definition of a successful woman: married by twenty-five with two kids before thirty." After moving to Brooklyn, four women share a basement apartment in Bushwick that they call the Dunge Inn. There's a serial entrepreneur whose next idea is sure to make it big; a late joiner still trying to find her calling; an up-and-coming actor; and the novel's narrator, EJ. They call themselves the Redstockings, after "the 1970s feminists who performed street theater with all these brilliant political messages about how they were caged by the patriarchy."
At 28, EJ is an aspiring playwright, between babysitting and driving for Uber. She's the group's ringleader and authors their revolutionary anti-marriage pact. But the friends are each navigating their own young lives, professionally, creatively, and yes, romantically. At the kind of art opening she'd usually never attend, EJ meets a man she can't stop thinking about. Surprising even herself, she becomes attached to his dog. And she learns she has old wounds that need reexamining.
The Anti-Marriage Pact interrogates cultural norms through its strong-voiced protagonist. EJ--a huge personality, joyfully and unapologetically abrasive, and sure she's never had a bad idea--finds that life may still hold some surprises for her, and her hard-won journey will be the most revealing of all. EJ is not always a sympathetic character, but she keeps readers guessing as to her next move. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia