WE HAD NO RULES

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.