Review by Booklist Review
In this smart, dark riot of a novel from the author of the essay collection Sunshine State (2017), Nina moves in and out of relationships with unavailable men at lightning speed. It's a great distraction from the lack of traction in her writing career. Nina also struggles to make time to Skype her lesbian nudist mother and her best friend, a single mother with even worse taste in relationships than Nina. Nina moves from man to man, and writing project to writing project, with her attention flitting faster and faster each time. Her cast of ex-boyfriends is a treat to read for its abject messiness: there's Seth, whose recent gallery show featured literal garbage; Brian, whose life outside his affair with Nina is even more of a disaster than the affair itself; and Aaron, who lives with his parents and entices Nina into serious domestication after they pen their magnum opus together. Nina's search for love, fulfillment, and demonstrative success becomes a scathing critique of modern hustle culture and the privilege of making art.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Gossip, sexual desire, and the uncompromising economics for aspiring artists guide the action in Gerard's lurid, captivating tale (after the essay collection Sunshine State). Nina Wicks, a 20-something writer with an eating disorder and pill addiction who dropped out of college in New York City, is back home on the Florida Gulf Coast, dating a pretentious artist named Seth while sexting with her magazine editor, Brian, and talking on the phone with her best friend, Odessa, about an attempt to reconnect with her emotionally distant mother. Nina and Seth move to Brooklyn for her to begin a writing program, and she finds a low-paying gig that affords her a space to write. After Nina reconnects with Aaron, an acquaintance from college, they discuss making a movie titled True Love, and their volatile attraction leads to her dizzying breakup with Seth and harrowing fights between Nina and Aaron, which reach a fever pitch after Nina becomes the victim of revenge porn from Brian. Aaron's movie idea ("a series of ill-conceived relationships that flame out in humiliating ways") partially describes the book, but Nina's defiance against labels and mansplaining as she works through her pain on her own terms adds an arresting feminist layer. Gerard's unflinching look at youthful desperation marks an exciting turn in her work. (July)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Having debuted with the novel Binary Star, a burst of icy freshness that was a Los Angeles Times Award finalist, and followed with the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award-winning essay collection Sunshine State, Gerard now introduces us to Nina. A troubled writer/dreamer, Nina tries to find love with inappropriate, emotionally unyielding men, but what are you going to do with an artist who exhibits trash in cheerful Tupperware? With a 35,000-copy first printing.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A young woman moves from suburban Florida to New York City to pursue her MFA in writing but finds she has dragged her old life with her. It's not so much that Nina has come adrift as that she was never tethered to begin with. Her parents' preoccupation with their bitter divorce left her "cutting [herself] and sneaking pills" as early as middle school, and when she moves to New York for college, her self-destructive behavior spirals out of control. She returns home before she finishes her degree and spends eight weeks in rehab in Tampa for "weed, wine, sex, starvation….any numbing or mood-altering agent would do." In the three years that have since passed, Nina has surrounded herself with a cadre of old friends and new bad influences, each embroiled in their own brands of escapist navel-gazing. Chief among these are Seth, Nina's boyfriend, a self-described "artistic genius" who is incapable of completing either his artistic projects or his job applications; Odessa, a childhood friend who is reuniting with her daughter's father in spite of the permanent restraining order she has taken out on him; and Brian, an editor at the paper for which Nina freelances, who has a penchant for recording their increasingly humiliating sexual encounters. Through it all, Nina has been working on an autobiographical story cycle based on her and Seth's love life. When she's admitted to an MFA program, she moves back to New York with Seth. There, she quickly becomes involved with Aaron, a friend from college, with whom she begins another autobiographical project, a screenplay titled True Love. Nina is a brilliantly observant narrator, able to take the caustic material of her squalid living conditions and her increasingly abusive relationships and render it with a precise insouciance. Yet, though Nina's primary quest is for self-knowledge, she turns every possible insight into a reiteration of what she already knows best: the shape of her ravenous need. The problem, both for Nina and the novel, is that nothing she creates out of her experiences treads beyond the well-worn paths of her narcissism, rendering the narrative static and all the characters who are not Nina into indistinguishable props for the performance of her selfhood. A book that occasionally provokes introspection but mostly founders under the weight of its own gaze. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
