Nerve Damage

In the dark and often funny debut novel from Stinson, a young woman comes to believe her stalker ex-boyfriend has followed her across the country. At a bar in Los Angeles, where she moved from Brooklyn two years earlier, Clarice sees a guy who might be her ex, P.T. As she watches this man confidently flirt with the bartender, Clarice grows infuriated, given that their breakup and his subsequent stalking, which caused her to get a restraining order that’s recently expired, left her with “the sexual prowess of unleavened bread.” In between twice-a-week therapy sessions, Clarice fixates on the possibility that P.T. has followed her across the country. She also recalls better times, such as when P.T. presented her with a four-leaf clover he’d found in Prospect Park; mulls over the nature of love (“Was I rewriting history to deny I ever loved him because of how it turned out?”); and reflects on the irony of how their roles reversed, remembering that when they were together, she was “desperate for him to want me.” Stinson raises the stakes as Clarice exhibits stalker tendencies of her own, even following the bartender for clues as to P.T.’s whereabouts. Shot through with acerbic wit, this is both unsettling and un-put-downable. Agent: Eloy Bleifuss Prados, Neon Literary. (May)