Nerve Damage - by Annakeara Stinson (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A riotous revenge novel about a 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 only arrived 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 only reveal 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.

A profane and poignant debut novel, Nerve Damage is a different kind of survivor narrative, about how far one woman will go to wrest back control of her life in a world determined to send her spiraling.

Review Quotes

"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!

"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

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.