Nothing Can Hurt You centres on the killing of a young student, Sara, by her boyfriend, Blake, who we are told has schizophrenia and who claims to have taken LSD on the night he slit Sara’s throat. Blake comes from a wealthy family, has never been in trouble before and has the means to arrange for a good lawyer. Perhaps surprisingly, he is acquitted on the grounds of insanity and goes free.
This novel is a hard one to pin down. We’re not really finding out more about what happened to Sara, nor are we learning more about the killer. There’s little focus on questioning motive or even really seeming to come down on a certain view on how we as a society deal with such events/people. I ended this not entirely sure how I was meant to feel about things.
While this doesn’t fit the expectations of a thriller, it was cleverly constructed. Each chapter has as its focus someone involved with the murder of Sara. We begin with the woman who discovered her body, but we also have a young girl who she babysat, her half-sister and a journalist investigating the story amongst others. What they all have in common is a sense of disruption following the death of Sara.
In style and focus, this reminded me very much of Jon McGregor’s Reservoir 13. I was somewhat surprised to learn this was based on a true story, as the way in which it is written makes it seem so separate from the everyday world most of us inhabit. I’m grateful to NetGalley for allowing me to read this prior to publication, and it does strike me as a book that will offer up new links/perspectives upon further reading.