Nothing Can Hurt You

Reviews

Captivating, serpentine and affecting, Nicola Maye Goldberg’s Nothing Can Hurt You subverts the tropes of the ‘dead girl’ genre in ways that impart its female characters with a dark majesty and mystery all their own. Like a gothic Olive Kitteridge mixed with Gillian Flynn . . . [Nothing Can Hurt You] is masterful, a small-scale renovation of a seemingly exhausted genre. Fascinating . . . the book is less about the murder itself than about its aftermath, the long tendrils of guilt, sadness, anger and confusion that stretch out from a single act, wrapping themselves around everyone they touch. Fans of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl will love Nicola Maye Goldberg's Nothing Can Hurt You. A terrifying and captivating story of a young college girl's murder in 1997, the unraveling web of lies and misinformation, and a serial killer's questionable role in it all will have you turning pages faster than ever. Haunting, powerful . . . Both immediate and expansive . . . Goldberg makes urgently clear that violence against women is not merely an insidious interloper in our society, but a part of its very foundation. Goldberg’s razor-sharp, intricately constructed tale, with its varied voices, will leave few readers unmoved. Fans of literary thrillers will relish this incisive account of murder and its aftermath. Powerful . . . An intriguing look at the ways in which gender violence ripples through an entire community. Nothing Can Hurt You is smart and human and true, simultaneously frightening and tender. Goldberg has written a gripping and tremendously searing book, one that will stay with me for a long time in ways I can't yet entirely imagine. Nothing Can Hurt You is a beautifully crafted novel with a terrifying story to tell. It's about a murder, and yes, there's a serial killer lurking, but the scariest thing here is the way that violence and violation shade their way into innocence and normality. This is one of those novels that makes you take a hard look at everything, starting with yourself. I couldn't put it down." A daring, electric debut. As Nicola Goldberg unfolds the mysteries and meaning of a college girl’s murder, she tells a riveting story of how revenge, danger, grief and love collide in the aftermath of violence. This novel feels wholly new--Goldberg elegantly destroys all the ‘dead girl’ tropes we’ve tired of, and in doing so reinvents the thriller for a new generation--her heroines, like her voice, are wise, darkly funny, and often startingly beautiful. The pleasure of falling into Goldberg’s taut thriller is in some ways a trap, a literary trompe l’oeil that momentarily screens us from what Nothing Can Hurt You is actually about. Investigating the relationships between women, voyeurism and violence, Goldberg elegantly excavates the ways in which crime simultaneously repulses and compels us, she reminds us why we are forever obsessed with looking at things that we are not supposed to see. Nicola Maye Goldberg articulates a new kind of darkness within the female psyche—one that makes this book pulse forth with danger and suspense. Between the unexpected turns and the sharp sentences, it's nearly impossible to stop reading Nothing Can Hurt You. Nicola Maye Goldberg’s novel Nothing Can Hurt You takes a prismatic approach to a murder, and to the harsh reality of violence against women. Her vantage is clear-eyed and unsentimental, rich in both wit and compassion . . . This novel is timely, provocative, and deeply resonant. A book that reads like music. Nothing Can Hurt You is an intoxicating, lyrical, and honest journey into the traumatic murder of a young woman and its reverberating anguish. Nicola Maye Goldberg is a startling talent, inhabiting different voices and characters to create a reading experience both compulsive and transformative. I could not stop reading this book, and was haunted by it long after I finished. Creepy and compelling, Nothing Can Hurt You examines the many ways that murder produces lasting pain, lingering grief and permanent loss, disclosed in the stories of the wounded. With literary flair—and authorial vision that transcends the banality of lesser crime fiction—Goldberg draws on two real-life crimes to construct this troubling but touching novel. A haunting, explosive tale, it will keep you turning the pages until the very end. Expand reviews