We Had No Rules

March 1, 2020
Queer characters break rules and make them in Manning's smart debut collection. "My family had no rules," says the teenage narrator in the title story. "At least it felt that way for a time, because most of the rules were vague and unspoken." There's one rule, however, that the narrator and her sister, Stacy, come to understand: Being queer is not OK. Stacy is kicked out for "choosing" her sexuality, and the narrator runs away before her parents can reject her. But joining her sister's queer household comes with new rules that, while intended to keep her safe, wind up putting her in a vulnerable position. These are intellectually keen stories that measure the high cost of heteronormativity and also critique equally restrictive norms within the queer community. "I'm sensitive about being recognized as queer or radical," explains the narrator of "Ninety Days," whose lover, Denise, has left her to transition to being a man. Being outwardly femme means the narrator has to perform her queerness and "come out, multiple times a day." Sometimes the rule is that there are no rules. At least that's what the queer narrator of "Chewbacca and Clyde" thinks when she comes home from a backpacking trip and brags to her partner, Meredith, about having had sex with a man. "Who are you?" Meredith asks. Manning's overriding interest in sex, sexuality, and power means their characters are sometimes conscripted into playing specific roles that flatten them and some of these stories. But when they complicate the script, this work is a powerful testament to the complexity of identity and desire. "The term's 'bottom, ' " a character describes, "but it's not always about penetration." Instead, it's about the "the vulnerability and the weight and the pain...and the sheer disbelief that I was a space for claiming and fitting." An incisive but slightly uneven debut collection about the nuances of queer identity.

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Starred review from March 23, 2020
Manning’s debut collection exquisitely examines queer relationships with equal parts humor, heartache, and titillation. Many of the stories hinge on age differences, occasionally with recurring characters who repeat the pattern of past sexual encounters. The title story follows a young unnamed lesbian runaway learning the ropes of 1980s New York City via a new haircut and wardrobe, and her sexual initiation with an older roommate. “The Boy on the Periphery of the World” follows two millennial men attending a lavish AIDS benefit, where they contend with the relative ease of their lifestyle compared to older gay men, whose perspectives cause them to question their identity (“Brian and I fuck, but we aren’t gay yet”). The runaway reappears decades later in the Pacific Northwest, where she runs a farm and talks about creating a community for queer and trans people. Her goals are complicated by a burgeoning attraction to a young farmhand (“All these systems are waiting right underneath you, and if you aren’t paying attention, you become complicit,” she reflects). Manning handles complicated subject matter with playful self-awareness (one story begins, “Oh, fuck it, I’m writing lesbian fiction”). This enriching view of queer worlds unpacks narratives that have always been there, even if they’re not often seen.

Starred review from April 1, 2020
Manning's author statement couldn't be clearer. I had no idea how to write authentically until the day when I typed the sentence ?Oh, f*ck it. I'm writing lesbian fiction.' That declaration became Gay Tale, one of 11 stories in this collection, her first, about the myriad ways of falling, making, betraying, and celebrating love. We Had No Rules and The Wallaby share the same narrator, a 16-year-old who has run away to live with her sister in New York City, in the former; in the other, set decades later, she faces the loss of that now fatally ill sibling. Three family members affected by divorce each get a story, moving backwards in time: the cuckolded husband attending his ex-wife's funeral in The Appropriate Weight"; the gay wife concerned about their distracted adult daughter in Seeing in the Dark, and the daughter as a 16-year-old discovering romance in The Only Pain You Feel. Perceived infidelity cleaves a couple in Professor M, and casual infidelity destroys in Chewbacca and Clyde. Two young gay lovers coincidentally both have (very different) gay uncles in The Boy on the Periphery of the World. Outrageous behavior abounds in Ninety Days and The Painting on Bedford Avenue. Wistful, funny, angry, bitter, raw?Manning both shocks and enthralls.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)