A Manual for How to Love Us

January 9, 2023
Poet Slaughter’s gritty debut fiction collection (after The Sorrow Festival) follows protagonists grappling with longing and loss. In “Anywhere,” narrator Andrea reunites with her friend Zell after five years apart and accepts Zell’s invitation to go on a road trip. The trip’s parameters are vague at the outset; Andrea, who’s long been in love with Zell, is excited for the chance to “run away” with her, and Andrea wonders if Zell is trying to evade someone. Not only is the trip lacking in fun, though, it ends in gunfire. “You Too Can Cure Your Life” follows Melody, who peddles a dubious and possibly harmful medicine called Life Cure online and meets a woman from Guatemala who’s been taking Life Cure, and whose partner left her after her cancer diagnosis. In “Nest,” two sisters cope with the recent death of their father. The 16-year-old narrator dates an older guy, while her younger sister, Kate, doesn’t eat. Meanwhile, the narrator thinks their father’s ghost has taken up residence in her hair, but doesn’t tell Kate. Taken as a whole, the amount of suffering faced by the characters makes the book feel one-note, though there are plenty of inviting lyrical descriptions (here’s Andrea from “Anywhere,” recounting the trip: “Miles and miles of night, the darkness like a fleece blanket”). Those who can power through the pervading gloom will appreciate Slaughter’s storytelling chops.

January 1, 2023

DEBUT Following two poetry collections (including The Sorrow Festival), Slaughter offers a story collection that invites us to enter into strange and liminal spaces holding the simple, tense truth that to be human is an act of social acquiescence that contains a latent feral element within us all. Each voice is decidedly female, with the various incarnations revealing the inherent dangers, vulnerabilities, and strengths of living in a female body; the stories themselves refuse to judge actions society labels as risky, foolhardy, or wanton. These women heedlessly run away into the unknown, with girls living in carefully self-constructed worlds in order to survive, and wives and mothers navigating the treacherousness of everyday life--all beautifully realized examples of the shameless complexity of living. In addition to the delightfully tangled worlds Slaughter so compellingly creates, there is an added enjoyment in her elastic use of form. In the story "The Box," large sections of the narrative are black, evoking a mute voice for an inanimate character, while a clever use of footnotes allows readers entry into internal thoughts. The title story uses short, prose poem--like fragments that read like some ancient artifact of folk-telling that never rings anachronistic. VERDICT Slaughter admirably conveys a heightened awareness of how we harbor within our tamed lives an undeniable wildness.--Laura Florence

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2023
In Slaughter's stunningly fierce debut (she's written two collections of poetry), women find resilience on the edge of survival and loss. Set in the South, the collection of short stories opens with Zell and Andrea, childhood friends who often reconnect in moments of life and death: lightning, bullets, funerals. In another tale, a member of a throuple is tasked with securing a nanny for their child in Florida, igniting questions on the group's dynamic and the member's own waning significance in it. And the titular story, composed of haunting vignettes, acts as a guide to mother, father, and other family members, redefining common themes like home or hero for the reader. Though some of the main characters remain nameless, they all share an unshakable force that pushes them through grief and fear. Slaughter intentionally blurs the line between real and unreal and ghosts and people, creating a spellbinding tilt across stories and worlds. This dark but whimsical collection is perfect for fans of magical realism and strong female characters.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.