Swift Press has described Other People Manage as “a once-in-a-lifetime discovery of a great novel from the slush pile.”
It starts in the late 1970s, when Marge and Peg meet in the Women’s Coffee House, which is less a place to drink coffee than a place where two women can dance together safely. But someone is watching them, and her fixation with Peg will affect the rest of their lives.
Other People Manage is a novel about the pain we all carry and the love that gets us through.
Available in bookshops within the reach of British publishing or online from Waterstones–a British bookstore that will ship to other countries. Or order it from Swift Press. Now out in paperback.
“It is rare that a novel of such quiet observation and gentle introspection moves me as profoundly as Other People Manage. . . . A tender and beautiful addition to the literary canon, and a mirror for LGBT readers.”
– Joelle Taylor, in the Irish Times
“A quietly devastating novel about our failings and how we cope.”
– Patrick Gale
“A story that is painful and difficult at the same time that it is deeply rewarding”
– David Huddle
“A persuasive and deftly told story about a long-lasting love. . . . Hawley is an impeccable reporter on the tangled motives and self-defeating strategies of people trying to stay emotionally connected to one another, and Marge’s wry, self-deprecating humour makes her good company. Stingingly accurate observations about coupledom enliven nearly every page.”
– Heather Cass White, in the Times Literary Supplement
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You can hear an interview on Radio Cornwall if you like. I haven’t listened–I hate listening to myself–so I can’t promise that I’m even marginally coherent. But I have read a really great review in the Irish Times and Bookanista has an interview that not only includes a few photos of Minneapolis but managed to find one that includes a couple of gloriously seedy bars I remember. (No, I was never a regular. I was a cab driver. I knew all the seedy bars.)
Notes from the U.K. 