Nerve Damage - by Annakeara Stinson (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"Heady, harrowing, and darkly funny" (The New York Times Book Review), Nerve Damage follows one woman's quest to escape her stalker ex-boyfriend--by stalking him herself.

"It's impossible for a book so chilling, so uncanny, so urgent to also be this funny. Nerve Damage is a major debut." --Kaveh Akbar, New York Times bestselling author of Martyr!

Clarice's breakup with P.T. began the usual way--she discovered he was cheating. Then came the constant texts, the nonstop emails from burner accounts, countless phone calls from dozens of different numbers. He showed up outside her apartment and her office. He sent her flowers and poems, and, perhaps most sinister of all, a link to the music video for Dido's "White Flag." Relief arrived only when Clarice finally obtained a restraining order and one-way ticket from New York to L.A.

Just as the restraining order expires--and three years to the day since she left him--Clarice spots a man who looks suspiciously like P.T. at a nightclub. Could it be him? Her best friend thinks she's imagining things. Her therapist wants her to focus on healing her inner child. Her mother is busy planning her wedding to her fourth husband. A psychic medium can reveal only that P.T.'s energy is too volatile to locate on the spiritual plane. As painful memories resurface, Clarice is convinced her ex has returned to ruin her life. But with scant evidence to prove it, she takes increasingly unhinged steps to uncover the truth, ultimately leading to a place where paranoia and reality begin to blur. How far will she go to wrest back control of her life in a world determined to send her spiraling?

Review Quotes

"Heady, harrowing and darkly funny... Appropriately claustrophobic... Stinson's chameleon-like ability to shift without warning between quippy text-speak and breathtaking, lyrical passages heightens the book's overall jitteriness... It feels natural for the reader to descend into paranoia along with Clarice... Juiciness of this premise aside, beneath the novel's acerbic, madcap humor is a sobering narrative about the emotional cost of surviving abuse. Clarice is not alone in her trauma, but part of a tapestry of women in the story whose lives have been upended by the violence of men... Stinson writes these characters tenderly, unveiling their flaws and poor choices without judgment, knowing that too often there is a broken woman behind them."
--Violet Kupersmith, The New York Times Book Review

"Witty, sexy and moving."
--People

"Annakeara Stinson's debut draws you in under the guise of a revenge novel, which grips the reader before revealing itself to be a sharply-written character study... The prose is clever... The humor works as a sleight of hand, Clarice's coping mechanism of choice, while Stinson is building the tension... Fresh and resonant... Spending time in Clarice's mind may offer readers new neural pathways, which is all that a great work of fiction can ask to do."
--The Brooklyn Rail

"Stinson's voice, her prose, is a feast. I genuinely don't understand how it all works so well, the narrative chaos advanced by sentences you could hang in a museum just to watch them turn in the light, everything cut through with wisdom betraying some maturation of the spirit going far beyond craft."
--Kaveh Akbar, New York Times bestselling author of Martyr!

"Stinson has written a singular and blisteringly smart debut, a thriller embedded with virtuosic reflections about psychological inheritance, obsession, and the morbid erotic. I read this novel addictively, frequently cringing in terror and laughing out loud, sometimes simultaneously."
--Melissa Febos, national bestselling author of Girlhood and The Dry Season

"Rambunctious, hilarious, eerie, and preternaturally smart, Stinson's debut turns the familiar dynamics of stalking and other gendered predations on its head. Her wildly original voice is the one we so desperately need to shine an illuminating light on our strange modern times."
--Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun

"This book is brilliant! Stinson explodes and expands the trauma narrative showing how human healing can be as chaotic as it is cathartic."
--Darcey Steinke, author of Suicide Blonde and Flash Count Diary

"A witty, propulsive, and unsettling story told in an impeccable voice. This is a darkly comic novel about reclaiming your sanity by acting a little crazy."
--Emily Austin, author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

"Exuberantly profane... All is not necessarily as it seems, to put it mildly, but mess with Clarice at your peril."
--Alta

"Dark and often funny... Shot through with acerbic wit, this is both unsettling and un-put-downable."
--Publishers Weekly

"Clarice is a winning heroine, with a keen, biting humor that brings levity to a harrowing tale... Clarice's resourceful determination to prevail over her worst fears gives the novel a propulsive energy, and the conclusion deftly reveals the scope of her triumph... The narrator's resilient spirit powers this troubling tale. A compelling debut."
--Kirkus

About the Author

ANNAKEARA STINSON is a writer whose work has appeared in Bustle, Brooklyn Magazine, The Inquisitive Eater, IndieWire, Paste, Marie Claire, and more. She has an M.F.A. in fiction from The New School and currently lives in L.A.