"Nothing Can Hurt You"

Nicola Maye Goldberg is the author of Other Women and The Doll Factory. She lives in New York City.

Goldberg applied the Page 69 Test to her new literary thriller, Nothing Can Hurt You, and reported the following:

Page 69 is in the chapter dedicated to Sam, whose college best friend, Blake, committed the murder that is at the center of the novel. On this page, Sam recalls visiting Blake shortly after he was released from a psychiatric hospital.

You’d get a pretty good idea about the book from page 69. The book is mostly about the ways in which Blake’s murder of his girlfriend, Sara, haunt the people who knew them, and Sam is one of those people. His perspective on Blake is distinct from say, Blake’s sister, or his wife, who are also characters in the book, and this is the chapter that most explores who Blake was immediately before the murder.

The effect of the book is intended to be kaleidoscopic, so really any page would work. Each chapter is about someone who is changed in some way by Sara’s murder, whether directly, like her half-sister, or indirectly, like the woman who finds her corpse. It’s inspired by a murder that took place where I went to college, but also by the many similar murders around the world. I think of the story as a shattered crystal figurine. Each chapter is one of the broken pieces.

Visit Nicola Maye Goldberg's website.

Q&A with Nicola Maye Goldberg.

--Marshal Zeringue