Anย Entertainment Weeklyย 30 Hottest Books of the Summer Selectionย โขย Aย Refinery29ย 25 Books Youโll Want To Read This Summer Selection
One of todayโs most provocative literary writersโthe author of the critically-acclaimedย Sunshine Stateย andย theย Los Angeles Timesย First Fiction Award finalistย Binary Starโcaptures the confused state of modern romance and the egos that inflate it in aย dark comedy about a woman's search for acceptance, identity, and financial security in the rise of Trump.
Nina is a struggling writer, a college drop-out, a liar, and a cheater. More than anything she wants love. She deserves it.
From the burned-out suburbs of Florida to the anonymous squalor of New York City, she eats through an incestuous cast of characters in search of it: her mother, a narcissistic lesbian living in a nudist polycule; Odessa, a single mom with even worse taste in men than Nina; Seth, an artist whose latest show is comprised of three Tupperware containers full of trash; Brian, whose roller-coaster affair with Nina is the most stable โrelationshipโ in his life; and Aaron, an aspiring filmmaker living at home with his parents, with whom Nina begins to write her magnum opus.
Ninaโs quest for fulfillment is at once darkly comedic, acerbically acute, and painfully humanโa scathing critique of contemporary society, and a tender examination of our anguished yearning for connection in an era defined by detachment.
Sarah Gerard is the author of the essay collection Sunshine State, which was longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and the novel Binary Star, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her short stories, essays, interviews, and criticism have appeared in the New York Times, T Magazine, Granta, The Baffler, Vice, and the anthologies Tampa Noir, We Canโt Help it if Weโre From Florida, and One Small Blow Against Encroaching Totalitarianism. She lives in New York City with her true love, the writer Patrick Cottrell. Find her at Sarah-Gerard.com.