Binary Star

By Sarah Gerard

Finalist 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1953387551
• ISBN13: 9781953387554
• Release Date: May 2026
• Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
• Length: 184 Pages