Nerve Damage

'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, author of Martryr!?

A fresh, darkly funny subversion of the survivor narrative about a woman's quest to escape her stalker ex-boyfriend – by stalking him herself.

When Clarice broke up with P.T., he refused to be dumped. He sent non-stop emails and made hundreds of phone calls from dozens of different numbers. He showed up outside her office. He staked out her apartment. He sent her flowers and poems and, perhaps most sinister of all, a link to a Dido music video. Equal parts bewildering (who knew he listened to Dido?) and terrifying (am I going to die?), the harassment stopped only when Clarice filed a restraining order and bought a one-way ticket from New York to L.A.

Years later, as the restraining order is set to expire, Clarice spots a man who looks suspiciously like P.T. at a nightclub near her new apartment, flirting with the bartender. Clarice is certain her ex has returned to ruin her life, but with scant evidence pointing one way or another she spirals deeper in an unhinged, single-mined pursuit for the truth. As reality and paranoia start to merge, and boundaries start to blur, Clarice must decide how far she’s willing to go to wrest back control of her own life…

'Heady, harrowing and darkly funny . . . Stinson’s chameleon-like ability to shift without warning between quippy text-speak and breathtaking, lyrical passages heightens the book’s overall jitteriness . . . Beneath the novel’s acerbic, madcap humor is a sobering narrative about the emotional cost of surviving abuse’ New York Times

Further praise for NERVE DAMAGE:

‘Stinson has written a singular and blisteringly smart debut, a psychological 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