Other People Manage, now available in paperback

Posted on by

It’s out in paperback. You can find it here. Or here. Or elsewhere. Be creative.

“A tender and beautiful addition to the literary canon, and a mirror for LGBT readers.”
                                                                                                   – Joelle Taylor
 
“A story that is painful and difficult at the same time that it is deeply rewarding”
                                                                                            – David Huddle
 
“A quietly devastating novel about our failings and how we cope.”
                                                                                            – Patrick Gale
Other People Manage is a novel about hard-earned, everyday love. It’s about family, about loss, about the pain we all carry inside and the love that gets us through the day. It’s frequently funny, at times almost unbearably moving, and above all extraordinarily wise.* 
 
It begins in 1970s Minneapolis, with Marge and Peg meeting at the Women’s Coffeehouse. They stay together for decades but live in the shadow of a tragedy that struck early in their relationship. Then Peg dies, leaving Marge to work out what she has left in her life and if she still belongs in the family she’s adopted as her own.

 

  • I didn’t write that–I’m quoting–but however weird it is to hear someone call me wise, I do love it. E.H.

21 thoughts on “Other People Manage, now available in paperback”

        • I don’t know where you are, as an artist, with the love of praise, but I come from a family of rampant egos and learned early that no amount of praise is ever enough. I try to enjoy what I get and not long for more. Sometimes I even succeed. But I’ve had my one gloriously perfect review. If others follow, it’ll be lovely. If they don’t, I’ve had the one.

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply ↓

          • Praise is a wierd thing – yes, who it comes from counts a lot. Often I thibk I am just trying to impress my husband whose opinion I really value! But, yes if the Irish Times said nice things about my work I would frame it and put it on the wall. Praise and work the other way too ….”I’ll never be able to do that again etc”!!

            Liked by 1 person

            Reply ↓

            • Having one person to impress sounds oddly comforting–assuming (and I do) that they’re capable of being both critical and supportive. But yes–we’re complicated, contradictory creatures. Success is hard to deal with. The lack of success is hard to deal with. The actual definition of success is elusive and ever-changing.

              Might as well stay in bed and eat chocolate chip cookies, which is one of the things I’ve done through this bout of Covid.

              Liked by 1 person

              Reply ↓

              • I hope you are feeling a lot better soon. Let the sodding covid take its course and dont rush to do anything energetic for a while. In my experience if I over did things (who me?) the symptoms came back.

                Liked by 1 person

              • Oops. That’s worth knowing. I tested negative this morning and ran out and did the grocery shopping. I’ve been longing to do my own grocery shopping. I’ll admit to being tired…

                Okay, I’ll be (mostly) good. Thanks for the warning.

                Liked by 1 person

Talk to me

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.