Nevada

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Binnie, Imogen	4-week checkout	Due 05-25-2024
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Binnie, Imogen	4-week checkout	Due 04-28-2024

Originally published in 2013 by Topside Press.
"A beloved and blistering cult classic finally back in print, Nevada follows a disaffected trans woman as she embarks on a cross-country road trip"-- Provided by publisher.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Summary / Annotation
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

A cult classic for a reason submitted by redwood on July 14, 2023, 12:44pm Maria Griffiths is a 29-year-old trans woman living in New York City. She’s had the same monotonous bookstore job since before she transitioned, and is fairly bored with her girlfriend, Steph. She’s deeply unhappy, in a toxic routine of bagels with vegan cream cheese and hard drugs with her friend Piranha, unsure if she’ll ever be able to afford bottom surgery. Maria and Steph are breaking up for the whole first act of the novel—it’s drawn out with lies, self-searching. After Maria gets fired, the breakup culminates in her stealing Steph’s car and driving West.

Not much actually happens in this novel—we don’t see the drive West—and that’s, I expect, exactly why it’s become a cult classic. The novel dwells largely in its characters’ minds, especially Maria’s, exposing all her self-flagellation, philosophizing, and hope. She’s constantly overthinking every in and out of being trans, especially how the internet has shaped her.

When Maria walks into a Walmart, the main business in Star City, Nevada, looking for a Miranda Lambert CD (miles of country radio have made a fan out of her), she runs into James. When she sees him (I’m using he/him since Binnie does), she’s immediately sure that he’s a younger trans woman. James isn’t that sure about anything at all, but he does think that Maria is trans, and wants to know her a bit better to see what he can learn about himself. They wander around Star City and Reno together until James, overwhelmed, disappears. The unresolved ending, as Binnie says in the afterword, shows that “bossing someone else into being trans the same way that you are does not work.” I know I revealed the whole plot, but the plot is not the point of reading this detailed, nuanced work.