True Love : A Novel
Author(s): Sarah Gerard
A Glamour Best Book of 2020 • A Bustle Best Books of 2020 • Winner of an Audiofile Earphones Award • An Entertainment Weekly 30 Hottest Book of the Summer • A Refinery29 25 Book You’ll Want To Read This Summer Selection • A Chicago Review of Books 10 Must-Read Books of the Month • A LitHub Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A The Millions Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Shondaland 15 Hot Books for Summer
One of today’s most provocative literary writers—the author of the critically-acclaimed Sunshine State and the Los Angeles Times First Fiction Award finalist Binary Star—captures the confused state of modern romance and the egos that inflate it in a 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 “relationship” in his life; and Aaron, an aspiring filmmaker living at home with his parents, with whom Nina begins to write her magnum opus.
Nina’s quest for fulfillment is at once darkly comedic, acerbically acute, and painfully human—a scathing critique of contemporary society, and a tender examination of our anguished yearning for connection in an era defined by detachment.
Review(s):
"[A] darkly comic dissection of desire."
“The luster of True Love lies in its ability to hold a tenor, a mood so much so that it becomes a character, living and breathing… the opening scene setting the frenetic, emotional, and sexual multitasking mood. What is love, addiction, marriage, divorce, and sexuality in the age of screens? True Love reminds that we are all always proxies of ourselves, many places at once and also nowhere at all — hovering in the deadening buzz betwixt invisible infrastructures.”
"In the aching pages of TRUE LOVE, Gerard holds nothing back. What’s at stake in this frank, ferocious novel is the brutal, ever-elusive salvation of oneself. A smart, tender, startling work of brilliance."
“A scouring tale of how a person moves through toxic relationships while maintaining a sense of agency, subsisting with awareness in a noxious world.”
“True Love is as fluid and riotous a book as ‘true love’ is as a concept: so, very. And Sarah Gerard has once again proven herself to be one of the sharpest portrayers of the fuzziest parts of being alive.”
“This darkly comic novel… cycles through a memorable cast of characters—including… Seth, an artist whose latest show is composed of Tupperware containers full of trash; and Aaron, an aspiring filmmaker living at home.”
“Acerbically funny and sharply observant.”
“Written with an acerbic deadpan.... [Gerard’s] stylistic innovation brilliantly captures the way contemporary technology bifurcates our brains into different conversational tracks…. The novel thrums with tension, and Gerard captures the dynamic of a failing relationship with lacerating honesty—made all the worse by the challenges of working freelance in the dystopian era of late-stage capitalism…. A fascinating read for anyone looking to understand the world we’ll inhabit when the smoke of the Trump era clears.”
“An unapologetic drama about a woman's insistence on living at the apex of desire and self-destruction—what a rush!”
“This book is both appalling and hilarious, and is, at turns, surprisingly poignant. It’s an extremely resonant social satire that will definitely heat you up [from] a magnetic and influential literary figure.”
ISBN: 9780062937414