A Manual for How to Love Us

by Erin Slaughter

A debut, interlinked collection of stories exploring the primal nature of women's grief--offering insight into the profound experience of loss and the absurd ways in which we seek control in an unruly world.

Seamlessly shifting between the speculative and the blindingly real, balancing the bizarre with the subtle brutality of the mundane, A Manual for How to Love Us is a tender portrait of women trying their best to survive, love, and find genuine meaning in the aftermath of loss.

In these unconventional and unpredictably connected stories, Erin Slaughter shatters the stereotype of the soft-spoken, sorrowful woman in distress, queering the domestic and honoring the feral in all of us. In each story, grieving women embrace their wildest impulses as they attempt to master their lives: one woman becomes a "gazer" at a fraternity house, another slowly moves into her otherworldly stained-glass art, a couple speaks only their basement's black box, and a throuple must decide what to do when one partner disappears.

The women in Erin Slaughter's stories suffer messy breaks, whisper secrets to the ghosts tangled in the knots of their hair, eat raw meat to commune with their inner wolves, and build deadly MLM schemes along the Gulf Coast.

Set across oft-overlooked towns in the American South, A Manual for How to Love Us spotlights women who are living on the brink and clinging to its precipitous edge. Lyrical and surprisingly humorous, A Manual for How to Love Us is an exciting debut that reveals the sticky complications of living in a body, in all its grotesquerie and glory.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Contemporary, Lesbian, Mental Health

304 pages, Paperback

First published March 14, 2023

About the author

Erin Slaughter is the author of the memoir The Dead Dad Diaries (Autofocus Books, 2025), the short story collection A Manual for How to Love Us (Harper Perennial, 2023), and two books of poetry: The Sorrow Festival (Clash Books, 2022) and I Will Tell This Story to the Sun Until You Remember That You Are the Sun (New Rivers Press, 2019). Originally from Texas, she holds and MFA from Western Kentucky University and a PhD from Florida State University. She is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Coastal Carolina University.

Reviews

[emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

to be honest, i started writing mini reviews for each story, but then eventually i realized i felt the exact same way about each one.

which was that i didn't like them.

i have something i do not want to say, and i do not know how to say, and i wish i did not have to say, but it is the difficult to pin down point that all of my feelings on this book revolve around, so:

this has that certain je-ne-sais-quoi Debut writing style. kind of overwritten. kind of cliché. kind of nonsensical, like not every sentence connects to the next. kind of trying to be impressive. kind of giving the same vibe as, like, instagram poetry.

unfortunately, i decided i didn't like this book early, and despite my best efforts and the fact that stories began to be slightly different from each other, all of them continued to value drama and impressive writing over characters or story or themes or relatability or sense.

y'know. the little things.

bottom line: it should be illegal for me to dislike a book with a cover like that.

(thanks to the publisher for the copy)

---------------------
tbr review

a weird dark collection of lit fic stories exploring women's grief?? yeah. i'm interested

[Juliana Niño · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stunning. Truly exquisite writing. Every couple of pages I'd whisper to myself: yes, this is why I love literature, this thirst for words can only be quenched by a book like this.

I decided to take notes after each story and give each their own rating out of 5. I won't give any details as to what each story is about, but I will share my individual ratings below. My absolute favorites were Watching Boys Do Things and A Manual for How to Love us.

1. Anywhere || 4.5/5
2. You Too Can Cure Your Life || 2.5/5
3. The Box || 4.5/5
4. We Were Wolves || 4/5
5. The Dragging Route || 3/5
6. Watching Boys Do Things || 5/5
7. A Manual for How to Love Us || 5/5
8. Burrowing || 2.5/5
9. Nest || 4/5
10. The Forgotten Coast || 1/5
11. Crescendo 1.5/5
12. Instructions for Assembly || 3.5/5
13. Elsewhere 4.5/5

Recurring themes all throughout: girlhood, womanhood, female friendships, parenthood, marriage, grief, coping mechanisms, feeling trapped/stuck, poverty, class, etc.

Slaughter divides this book into three parts (six stories in Part One, one story in Part Two, and the last six stories in Part Three), and at first I didn't see why you would break up a collection of short stories into different parts when all stories are different in their own way...until I reached Part Three and it all made perfect sense. Even though my least favorite stories were in Part Three, I still enjoyed the clever shift in writing style, and it all starts with the single story that makes up Part Two: A Manual for How to Love Us. This was the catalyst, the story that lets the reader know what Slaughter is capable of. Anyone that has read short story collections knows that the story behind the title of the collection is usually the first one. But in this book, the title story is in the middle. It's a key to a door, one that leads you to a room with a magnifying glass and tweezers, inviting you to open your mind's eye a little wider, and find what cannot be easily seen. In the first half, I was impressed by Slaughter's brilliant writing and the variety of themes presented, but the latter half impressed me by Slaughter's use of allegory. I found myself pausing more often, highlighting what I felt needed to be carefully dissected.

There are feelings that I have never tried to put into words (thinking it would be too difficult), but Slaughter captured them perfectly and put them in writing; as I read these intimate realizations, I was forced to swallow them, accepting their truth.

This collection is for any and all who love coming across proof that words are magic, and that this magic is deliciously satisfying.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and Harper Perennial for an ARC in exchange for my honest review (:

[Anita · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had rated each story independently, but realized it just makes the book seem mediocre. A lot of 3's, a couple 2's and only one 4.5 round this book to an average 3 star read. I usually enjoy short stories, but this book suffered from short story ennui. Nothing led to anything and I found myself wondering what the point is. I never really found it, and didn't really enjoy this collection myself. It centered around loneliness, complex feelings, and relationships that essentially aren't good for us. It does make one reflect, however, on how lonely we can be even while participating in relationships, and the hurt we may allow others to cause us.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an ecopy.

[Abby Kolosieke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing can ever compare to this book. It found me in the most perfect time of my life and I want everyone I know to read it.

[charlotte, · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rep: sapphic mcs, gay side character, polyamory

[keys ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

boy, has this book brought me on a ride! there were chapters that i fell in love with and found myself crying towards, but there were also ones that put me in huge reading slumps. i decided to write mini reviews for each chapter, but i font feel like writing each one, so im just going to say my favorites and my least favorites thayt i remember off the top of my head (but i forgot the names of all the chapters)
favorite: the one w the box and LITTLE BELLY
i love little belly sm would give my life for him! i loved the concept and the story of the box, it was so cutesyyyyyy
favorite: the one w the melody girl
so intrigued concept was so cool
favorite: the second to last chapter
this one was about the country kids and i can honestly read a whole book about this, it was so good!
now i have a bunch of others i liked but i js wanted to point out those. now for some i didnt like…
didnt like: the last one
sorry but all the ummmm dirty references distracted me from the point of the chapter
didnt like: the first one
it reminded me of my warrior cats phase!!! i hated the travellinggggg it was so ewwwwwwww
in summary this book wasnt that bad, but there was js chapters i didnt like. i feel lile there r chapters in yhere that could be beautiful, amazing stories tho, and they deserve to go to light. so yewh, i would reccomend….
(if u can put up w a crap ton of odd inappropriate references and some really boring chapters)
ps: the cover is worth buying alone

[Emily Perkovich · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am in love with this. It also reminded me of how much I tend to prefer fiction stories written by a poet. The prose was gorgeous, and I saved so many lines to write after pieces. Every story was tinged with a kind of grief that was so real but portrayed with surrealism. As someone who is always shooting for this balance in their own writing, it spoke to me on an extremely intimate level. There wasn’t a single story I didn’t enjoy. Thank you Harper Perennial and Net Galley for the reviewer copy.


*I didn’t love the blurb description of “interlinked” as it can portray an idea that every story has character or setting relations that don’t really exist here. I wish it had just mentioned the thematic connection. But that has nothing to do with my feelings on the work.

[Star Gater · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too dark. Symbolism went further than I'm comfortable with.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I REALLY liked this short story collection. It was dark, full of grief, longing, and loss, and I appreciated all the meditations on death, fear, and love. Many of the stories feel memorable and original, and I think they were written beautifully. I kept taking pictures of passages with beautiful quotes. I felt like I could connect to many of the narrators, and there were certain similarities between a few of them, but they were unique enough that it didn't feel like the same story being told over and over. I only wish some of these stories were longer. Most worked perfectly as short stories, but there were a couple that I think could be turned into a novel.

See more of my thoughts here: https://youtu.be/YolzEzpLygM

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Clichés & easy associations slip through lyrical descriptions.

I
Anywhere ⇝ 4 stars
You Too Can Cure Your Life ⇝ 3 stars
The Box ⇝ 2 stars
We Were Wolves ⇝ 3 stars
The Dragging Route ⇝ 2 stars
Watching Boys Do Things ⇝ DNFed...
II
A Manual for How to Love Us ⇝ 1 star
III
Burrowing ⇝ 1 star
Nest ⇝ 3 stars
The Forgotten Coast ⇝ 1 star
Crescendo ⇝ 1 star
Instructions for Assembly ⇝ 3 stars
Elsewhere ⇝ 2 stars

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chilling and poetic stories. They will haunt me for a long time, in the best way.

[hans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Consisting of 13 stories, A Manual For How To Love Us brought me into a gloomy and evocative womanhood theme that thoroughly explored on loss and grief, and the bizarreness of how loneliness and distress could sneak into one’s life in the brink of their trauma, desperation and sorrow.

Having only averagely rated most of the stories, I can’t help to still being invested on the author’s way in delivering her prose as I find her mellow almost mundane and depressing writing to be quite charming and inviting despite my underwhelming feeling towards most of her plot executions. Loving the intricacies of its characterization; mysteriously complex yet so appealingly crafted. I fancy how the characters sharing their musings, backstories and anxieties as well hauntingly narrated and captured the unflinching emotional pains that they endured.

“…my nerves were so raw with melancholy that I could almost feel them sizzling and curling up under my skin…”

“He was mine, too, in a way: But I did go on existing after he left, and carrying our story alone turned me feral with grief.”

Few stories that I personally enjoyed— Nest (a girl losing her dad due to a drowning incident and think his ghost has inhabited a knot in her hair), We Were Wolves (twisted characters with a wild mystified premise), The Box (a relationship stress, of solitude and emotional burdens told in a unique metaphorical narrative), Watching Boys Do Things (a girl work as a silent gazer at a fraternity house and started questioning the purpose of one’s existence) and Instructions For Assembly (tragic loss in a family with an impact of domestic violence and emotional abuse).

Not really a startling collection to me overall but I appreciate the central theme of it and how each observed a vast perspective and interpretation to one’s selfhood; on inner conflicts and self-fragility that specifically told through a woman’s voice. 3.5 stars to this!

Thank you Times Reads for the gifted review copy!

[Stephanie | stephonashelf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genre: Literary/Short Stories

Format: Audio

4.75🌟- I really really liked it!

This was a beautiful and tender debut short story collection with women as the center grappling with love, parenthood, identity, family, friendships, growing up, grief, loss, relationships, and social class and poverty. The author's writing was so poetic, lyrical, and unique. I loved the character-driven nature of it, and the variety of the stories while remaining connected throughout. There was a balance of speculative and real and she teetered between it masterfully.

A Manual for How to Love Us and The Forgotten Coast were especially memorable for me and ones that will stay with me. Any nod to FL always resonates because it's so familiar to me. I learned after I finished the book that the author is a PHD candidate at FSU where I went to school which makes this collection even more special to me.

Overall, a stunning short story collection centered on women that will leave you something to ponder.

[Maya🐛 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I honestly don’t know what to make of this book. I can’t tell if I liked it or if I didn’t. It certainly made me feel weird but not necessarily in a good or bad way. Some stories were stronger than others and spoke to me more closely, others I didn’t register. Nonetheless this is a solid book with strong writing, just not sure if it’s something for me.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was beautiful. Many 5 star stories and some 3 star for me.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

A Manual for How to Love Us is a collection of short stories which explore themes of loss, grief, and womanhood/femininity.

One thing that is glaringly obvious in this short story collection is that Erin Slaughter is a poet. Though some of these short stories were much more up my alley than others, all of them were equally poetically written, in the kind of way that makes you feel a story in your bones even before you've fully consciously processed it. There is a lot of variety here, too; at times stories are loud and weird, while other times they are quiet and deceptively simple. I don't think that every story in this collection is for everyone, but I do think that there is a lot to love and to dig into in these pages, and in all it is a really solid short story debut.

[♛ Federica ♛ · Rating 5 out of 5]

The way this book made me feral cannot properly be explained with words. The plot itself is actually very difficult to describe, both because the stories contained were mostly – but not entirely – separate from one another and because it was such a weird collection that I don't even know how to do justice to the topics that were tackled. It was weirdness mixed with magical realism mixed with literal manifestations of metaphorical concepts mixed with an underlying vein of genius that blanketed everything in a mystical aura.

Because this book falls under the literary fiction genre, it should really come as no surprise that the writing style was the strongest point but, holy fuck, it was so much more than I could have anticipated. It was poetic, vividly descriptive and so compelling; I swear the whole thing was laced with some sort of drug because I couldn't untangle myself from the pages no matter how hard I tried. Admittedly I didn't try very hard, but you get the point. The author's ability to consistently paint such clear pictures that were really a medium to indirectly talk about deeper topics and issues was done phenomenally, and the way she introduced characters that only existed in a very reduced space while still making them real and raw was truly astounding. The women in this collection were more fleshed out and relatable than some developed in full-length novels. Just pointing it out.

On the whole, this short story collection was original, it was poignant, it tackled relevant topics in a very unique and different way and it made me feel so many emotions I didn't know what to do with them. It's definitely a book I'm going to revisit in the future – possibly more than once – and perhaps even annotate thoroughly because it was just pure perfection. I can recognize that this is not for everyone but the ones who get it will get it with the full force of an avalanche and will not be able to think of anything else for a while. Clearly, I found it to be absolutely phenomenal and I'm so glad I managed to find it in the great chaos that is the literary world because hardly anyone has read it, so if you happen upon this review do yourself a favor and go read this masterpiece. As for me, I'm definitely going to check out Erin Slaughter's poetry because I now feel the impelling need to inhale every single word this woman has ever written.

In case you need some motivation, here's a quote from the very first page of the very first story just to give you an idea of the tone and prose you can expect from this book: "Then she offered me a new life like she was offering me a soda, and when a girl like that asks you to run away with her, you do. You take inventory of your little world, shuck off the pieces you won't miss, and betray the ones you will under the guise of adventure. […] You leave your cell phone on the kitchen counter and throw your clothes into a bag without bothering to fold them. In the car, you catch yourself really breathing for the first time in years, maybe, and it turns out breathing feels magnificent, the glory-dance of lungs. She asked me to run, so I ran, and I didn't ask where we were going, or why, because it didn’t matter. I was going with her." I could honestly share a quote from every single page of the book, but I'll leave you to experience all these wondrous words for yourself.

And now, just for reference, here's my ranking of the stories, along with their respective rating:
A Manual for How to Love Us — 5/5
We Were Wolves — 5/5
Anywhere — 5/5
Instructions for Assembly — 4.75/5
Watching Boys Do Things — 4.75/5
Elsewhere — 4.75/5
Nest — 4.5/5
The Box — 4.5/5
Burrowing — 4.25/5
Crescendo — 4/5
You Too Can Cure Your Life — 4/5
The Forgotten Coast — 3.5/5
The Dragging Route — 3/5

While the mathematical average is slightly less than 4.5 stars, I have no issue rounding up the rating because there were only a couple of stories that I didn't love, but everything else truly made me go batshit crazy in a way that no other book really has recently. I also think that some things throughout only fully made sense when regarded in relation to the others, so when I step back and look at this collection there is only one possible rating that comes to mind. Girl math > real math.

[Madeline · Rating 2 out of 5]

i really wanted to like this but it felt like as soon as it started to go somewhere, the short story would end, and then on to the next. it felt like the author was using a lot of words to say something that didn’t need that many words, with way too much flowery language. but i really think the biggest issue is that i didn’t get anything from each chapter. it always started intriguing and then quickly would turn into just useless narrative meandering. i decided to pass on the last few chapters but i read most of the collection.

[Emma Cagle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will forever linger in the back of my mind like a ghost. These stories were all hauntingly beautiful in their own ways. They truly encapsulated the different ways women walk though life. Every woman featured in this book was longing for something different and with each story I could feel myself longing with them.

[Marcia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uneven. But some beautiful moments.

[Meliza · Rating 2 out of 5]

i kinda liked the first story and the story of the girl who thinks she’s a wolf but even then neither of them really felt all that original to me. at this point i’ve read a lot of short story collection and this one kinda blurs among the other titles because nothing here really stands out. the stories all feel too busy, like they’re trying to juggle way too many ideas in an attempt to see deeper and more complex than they really are when the focus should’ve been on making the tone of the stories more entertaining because tbh this was kind of boring too. like the description mentions the ghost in a knot of hair and that sounds really cool but the story that has that element barely even focuses on the haunted knot (it’s not actually haunted clearly) cuz it has all these other ideas jammed into the story (sibling dynamics, dealing with death, bad friendships, boys, ect)

[Lauren Fly · Rating 3 out of 5]

“[The boys] were lonely, some of them, truly, poignantly lonely. But they were not afraid that they deserved to be.”

There were some real kickers in this book! It was cool that each story was separate from the others but that confused me at first. I was excited to read more about Zell from the first chapter and then it just ended. The writing style was unlike anything I’ve read which was cool, she had some unique vocabulary and descriptions.

I agree with some other reviews that each story could get its own rating, I thought the Zell story, the cardboard box story, the ant story and the Life Drink story were all really interesting. I had to skip two stories that I just could not get into.

Enjoyed this but it wasn’t amazing, 2.5-3 for me

[✨ Maude ✨ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I rarely struggle this badly to finish such a short book (a little under 300 pages, standard font size) but this dragged all the way to hell and back. At this point, it feels like some of these feminists short story collections have lost the plot and are just trying to be the weirdest, most marketable wanna be Cursed Bunny or Hit Parade of tears until they have no soul left. I know effort went on A Manual for How to Love Us but to me, this is the prose version of Twitter poetry. The stories stuck out so little from one another to me I literally don’t remember what the plot if the title story was ? Was it the weird one about the wolf ? Was is the word soup in the middle of the book ? Who’s to say?

[Yolanda | yolandaannmarie.reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

[arc review]
Thank you to Harper Perennial for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.
A Manual for How to Love Us releases March 14, 2023

“Love is the name we give to the precise moment when we recognize Someone as a protagonist, because what People love more than being in love is feeling like part of a Story. We want to be a narrative with purpose, structure, referenceable blueprints, a definite ending. When we tell each other our Stories, we are attempting to construct A Manual for How to Love Us.”


A Manual for How to Love Us is Erin Slaughter’s debut collection of short stories.

I found this to be unique but at times it was hard to distinguish one overall theme with such variance in each short story.

My favourite and the standout of them was the first one called “Anywhere” — the writing was languid yet intentional and at times the fluidity of the prose was comparable to that of poetry.

The first half of this collection was definitely stronger, in my opinion.

Some content warnings include: gunshot wound, gore, cancer + chemo, voyeurism, grief, and more.

[Ellis (whatellisreadnext) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let's just not even talk about it. The writing just didn't work for me. It felt overwritten and quite cringey in parts. The Dragging Route was the one story I enjoyed, just because it was the most speculative of the bunch. I don't understand the point of this collection, but I hope someone gets something out of it.

[Tanya Kelly-Hadley · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars as a whole. The stories individually ranged between a 3 to 5. It was a rollercoaster of emotions reading this for me, the writting was poetic at times and heavy with grief but very good overall.

[Régine · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF @ 44%

Oof. So many words where there ought to be less. Started off interesting enough through the first few stories and then turned into “huh?” so I’ve decided to save myself from further torment.

[Tate Dixon · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I watched boys pile sugar into their coffee and watched it dissolve like a swimmer beneath the surface of a lake. From a grime-streaked second-story window, I saw a blue chair and a
red backpack on the side of the road, and I saw a boy take it like he'd taken things his entire life: because it was there. I watched them not check the back seats of their cars before they drove off, not look over their shoulders when someone cried out, not inhale sharply as they passed an open garage door in the cover of night. They were lonely, some of them, truly, poignantly lonely. But they were not afraid that they deserved to be.”



•



🌟4/5🌟This short story collection was a pleasant surprise. I am often not a fan of short story collections but I keep picking them up anyways for the hope of finding one such as this. I did have quite a hesitant start since I did not love the first story and I still think it's a rather awkward placement in this collection. The other stories though blew me away - it was like looking into someone's eyes and them saying “I see you. I really see you”. A lot of these stories took place in Appalachia as well as parts of Texas - so I took great comfort in seeing two places I have come to consider home share a space in this collection - blended together with magical realism elements that left me longing for the days of being a kid and the unique freedom that brings. Dealing with the aftermath of loss and also touching on how lonely some relationships can be were two themes that were woven through each story and I felt the author did an excellent job at capturing such a wide range of what these can look like. I believe this author has some published poetry collection that I am hoping to check out soon.

While I loved most of these stories, these are some of the ones that stood out to me:

You Too Can Cure Your Life
The Box
Watching Boys Do Things
A Manual for How to Love us
Burrowing 
Nest 
Instructions for Assembly

[Madalyn Woodward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such an amazing collection of short stories. Usually with short story collections there are some that just don't resonate with me at all, but I really enjoyed every single story. I don't know if I could even choose a favorite.

Anywhere - 5/5
You Too Can Cure Your Life - 3.5/5
The Box - 5/5
We Were Wolves -4/5
The Dragging Route - 4/5
Watching Boys Do Things - 4/5

A Manual for How to Love Us - 5/5

Burrowing - 5/5
Nest - 4/5
The Forgotten Coast - 4/5
Crescendo - 4/5
Instructions for Assembly - 5/5
Elsewhere - 5/5

Thanks so much to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the advanced review copy of this book.

[Mireya casuallyreadingx · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to @Harperpernnial #OliveInfluencer for an ARC in return for an honest review of the book.

First off, this cover is stunning. Hmm. I think some of the stories I enjoyed. Maybe?? Many others, I really didn’t get/and couldn’t understand + connect with. I started to rate each individual story on its own and about half way through the book, I realized I didn’t care for many of them so i stopped. I wish this had more abundance and depth.