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Binary Star: A Novel
Not yet published
Expected 28 Apr 26Finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Fiction Prize
A new paperback edition of the debut novel by award-winning author, Sarah Gerard—an intense, elegiac portrait of two young lovers as they battle personal afflictions and traverse the American countryside.
Features a new introduction by Catherine Lacey.
"A bold, beautiful novel about wanting to disappear and almost succeeding. Sarah Gerard writes about love and loneliness in a new and brilliantly visceral way." —Jenny Offill
The language of the stars is the language of the body. Like a star, the anorexic burns fuel that isn't replenished; she is held together by her own gravity.
With luminous, lyrical prose, Binary Star is an impassioned account of a young woman struggling with anorexia and her long-distance, alcoholic boyfriend. On a road-trip circumnavigating the United States, they stumble into a book on veganarchism, and believe they've found a direction.
Binary Star is an intense, fast-moving saga of two young lovers and the culture that keeps them sick (or at least inundated with quick-fix solutions); a society that sells diet pills, sleeping pills, magazines that profile celebrities who lose weight or too much weight or put on weight, and books that pimp diet secrets or recipes for success.
A new paperback edition of the debut novel by award-winning author, Sarah Gerard—an intense, elegiac portrait of two young lovers as they battle personal afflictions and traverse the American countryside.
Features a new introduction by Catherine Lacey.
"A bold, beautiful novel about wanting to disappear and almost succeeding. Sarah Gerard writes about love and loneliness in a new and brilliantly visceral way." —Jenny Offill
The language of the stars is the language of the body. Like a star, the anorexic burns fuel that isn't replenished; she is held together by her own gravity.
With luminous, lyrical prose, Binary Star is an impassioned account of a young woman struggling with anorexia and her long-distance, alcoholic boyfriend. On a road-trip circumnavigating the United States, they stumble into a book on veganarchism, and believe they've found a direction.
Binary Star is an intense, fast-moving saga of two young lovers and the culture that keeps them sick (or at least inundated with quick-fix solutions); a society that sells diet pills, sleeping pills, magazines that profile celebrities who lose weight or too much weight or put on weight, and books that pimp diet secrets or recipes for success.
Kindle Edition
Expected publication April 28, 2026
About the author
Sarah Gerard
20 books239 followersSarah Gerard is the author of the essay collection Sunshine State; the novel Binary Star, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times first fiction prize; and two chapbooks, most recently BFF. She teaches writing at Columbia University and for independent workshop series, including Catapult, Sackett Street, and Brooklyn Poets. Her short stories, essays, interviews, and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Granta, The Baffler, Vice, BOMB Magazine, and other journals, as well as in anthologies. She writes a monthly column for Hazlitt and is currently at work on several books, including a novel about love and a nonfiction book about a murder.
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