‘Binary Star’: Gerard penned hypnotic narrative on eating disorder

A young woman in the grips of an eating disorder narrates her codependent relationship with her alcoholic boyfriend in Sarah Gerard's debut novel 'Binary Star” (Two Dollar Radio, 176 pages, $16). The narrator turns to the language and science of astronomy to find a parallel to her situation. With spare language that elucidates the act of starving oneself, Gerard has crafted a book that pulls us into its terrible gravity.

'Binary Star” is, in part, a social commentary, much concerned with the culture of thinness that obsesses us. The narrator lists celebrities and the countless magazine articles about them detailing each pound lost or gained. She lists the drugs available in a drugstore's diet aisle. She lists the plentiful - and often unhealthy - food she resists with every ounce of willpower.

'Binary Star” is as hypnotic as it is troubling. As the narrator seeks to become less and less material, we become more and more tethered to her, her decline attractive and repulsive at the same time:

'The hard air blends with the sweat on my skin. I'm alive. I have breath. I have heat from the car. I expand and I cool.

'I sit on the curb and pull up my sleeves. My wrists are thin and pale and I turn them over, hold them away from my body. A semi-truck hauling milk passes another semi hauling bread. I place my hand before it and let it drive through my palm. The road curves. The truck follows it.”

Gerard's narrator is on a terrible journey toward an unattainable and illusory perfection. The book illuminating that journey is itself perfect in its depiction of desperation and illness.

Reading

What: Mission Creek Festival: Sarah Gerard

Where: The Mill, 120 E. Burlington St., Iowa City

When: 6 p.m. Friday

Cost: Free