Sunshine State, Sarah Gerard
Sunshine State, Sarah Gerard
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Sunshine State
Essays

Author: Sarah Gerard

Narrator: Madeleine Maby

Unabridged: 10 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 04/11/2017


Synopsis

Rising literary star and Los Angeles Times First Fiction Award finalist Sarah Gerard uses her experiences growing up along Florida’s gulf coast to illuminate the struggles of modern human survival—physical, emotional, environmental—through a collection of essays exploring intimacy, addiction, obsession, religion, homelessness, and incarceration.  With the personal insight of The Empathy Exams, the societal exposal of Nickel and Dimed, and the stylistic innovation and intensity of her own break-out debut novel Binary Star, Sarah Gerard’s Sunshine State uses the intimately personal to unearth the deep reservoirs of humanity buried in the corners of our world often hardest to face.  In the collection’s title essay, Gerard volunteers at the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary, a world renowned bird refuge. There she meets its founder, who once modeled with a pelican on his arm for a Dewar’s Scotch campaign but has since declined into a pit of fraud and madness. He becomes our embezzling protagonist whose tales about the birds he “rescues” never quite add up. Gerard’s personal stories are no less eerie or poignant: An essay that begins as a look at Gerard’s first relationship becomes a heart-wrenching exploration of acquaintance rape and consent. An account of intimate female friendship pivots midway through, morphing into a meditation on jealousy and class.Sunshine State offers a unique look at Florida, a state whose economically and environmentally imperiled culture serves as a lens through which we can examine some of the most pressing issues haunting our nation.

About Sarah Gerard

Sarah Gerard is the author of the essay collection Sunshine State, which was longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and the novel Binary Star, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her short stories, essays, interviews, and criticism have appeared in the New York Times, T Magazine, Granta, The Baffler, Vice, and the anthologies Tampa Noir, We Can’t Help it if We’re From Florida, and One Small Blow Against Encroaching Totalitarianism. She lives in New York City with her true love, the writer Patrick Cottrell. Find her at Sarah-Gerard.com.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Bren fall in love with the sea. on March 02, 2020

"Our friendship was a sticky web. Our friendship was a black box. Our friendship was a swamp full of cottonmouths". Sunshine State by Sarah Gerard I really enjoyed this. I actually read it while down in Florida where I frequently vacation. It is a collection of essays and short stories. I will be hon......more

Goodreads review by Amy on April 28, 2017

I read this book because I'm also writing about place. I think it's incredibly challenging to write a researched piece while sustaining a clear, engaging personal narrative. Gerard struggles here. Some of these essays read like a dissertation. The research goes on for pages and we lose Gerard's voic......more

Goodreads review by Matt on March 26, 2017

I wanted badly to like this book. I did not. Part of the problem is that it was described as a new take on the state of Florida. The writing of the first essay, BFF, was engaging and sharp, and the product of a critical mind—but it had nothing to do with Florida other than being tangentially set ther......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on June 25, 2017

An eclectic essay collection that touches on topics ranging from friendship to homelessness to the environment. Sarah Gerard's strongest essays, such as "BFF" and "Rabbit", explore intimate emotions like loss and jealousy with vulnerability and detail. Some of her pieces that looked outward did not......more

Goodreads review by Lolly K Dandeneau on March 20, 2017

[URL not allowed] my blog “Every day. Bob’s parent’s sued people- the city, other motorists, etc.- for a living.” Essays, memoir, environmental… all these things make up this collection. BFF is a fantastic choice to start the book. It’s a raw, brutal bloodletting on friendship.......more