It’s a weird feeling to read shitloads of fiction all your life, and then read this book, and realize it’s the first book written specifically for someone like you to read it: “Gender may be a social construct, but so are cars, and if you ignore them, you still get hit.” I love how Imogen doesn’t give a fuck about her audience before she gives a fuck about trans women, we’re the primary audience and Jesus Christ that’s cathartic to have that as a reader. My unfeeling asshole-gland gets easily activated when I read that stuff, even if I identify with all of it (like Lorrie Moore on her off days) where I go “ Fuck girl, yeah I’ve been there but GOD STOP WHINING.” But it never happened here Imogen’s writing voice is so conversational and fluid while always totally fucking uncompromising and smart, I just fucking loved Maria all the time, through everything.Īnd, duh, I love how it’s a novel specifically about trans women, for trans women, written by a trans woman (any of which has rarely existed let alone all three at once) and that it talks about shit that probably only trans women know about and in a totally real and unbullshit or snow-covered way (see above re: experience drinking whiskey and/or crying and/or dumbass giggling). and pages.) of her inner monologue in a totally real and twisted way but it never feels overly sentimental or frustrating to read or anything. Imogen has this amazing ability to lay bare what’s driving Maria totally bonkers and give pages (and pages. So here we go: The book is funny, it reads super fast, the main character Maria is insanely loveable and hilarious even as she’s self-destructive and is kind of a jerk to her friends and generally just does a lot of stupid dumb shit. There’s lots of reasons the book is fucking great so maybe I’ll say a lot of those things and then get to what’s been bugging me. I have a Word doc with like a page of notes of what I wanted to say about it, and a pitch to a magazine about it that didn’t go anywhere, but mostly when I’ve tried to write about it I’ve ended up doing something else. 3 would’ve been) then I read it again a little more slowly and thoughtfully in January.

I got an advance copy early in November from Topside (which only felt slightly cooler than how I imagine getting an early copy of Super Mario Bros. The two days before which I spent most of reading the book in bed, lots of it drinking whiskey and/or crying and/or grinning and giggling like a dumbass. Pretty much the day after I finished reading Imogen Binnie’s Nevada, I decided I had to write about it. (Note: I tried to write this without spoiling stuff and completely failed, so, uh, this has spoilers?)

Nevada a novel imogen binnie