The House Where Nothing Hurts
A Novel
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The House Where Nothing Hurts
Narrated by:
Bronte Upshaw
Pre-order for $27.79
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Narrated by:
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Bronte Upshaw
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By:
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Ali Fountain
Summary
For fans of Yellowjackets and Bunny, an engrossing novel about the seduction of belonging, the repercussions of teenage vitriol, and the all-consuming horror of girlhood.
2022: I need your help. It’s happening again. When she gets the call, Leah is in the midst of her second pregnancy, haunted by the sense that the daughter she carries ought to be one of a pair of identical twins. She knows what “it” is—and knows she has to return.
2002: As a senior in high school, Leah and her best friend Christian lead their volleyball team to victory after victory. But when Christian, Leah, and their team break into their town’s haunted mansion to celebrate a win, everything changes. The girls discover that within the houses' walls, wounds magically heal, haircuts grow back, even death can be undone—for almost all the girls.
But as the girls’ visits to the house turn increasingly dangerous, Leah remains untouched by the house’s magic. Desperate to hide her differences, Leah begs her identical twin, Laura, to impersonate her for one night. But the house won’t be deceived. One girl is lost, and in the weeks that follow, another dies within the house’s grounds.
Nuanced, cutting, and propulsive, The House Where Nothing Hurts is a masterful and gripping portrait of girlhood and womanhood in all its messiness and horror.©2027 Ali Fountain (P)2027 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Critic Reviews
The House Where Nothing Hurts is at once seductive and unsettling, vicious and tender—all the strange and fierce opposites of teen girlhood and motherhood unfurling in a literary horror novel unlike any I've read. A haunted house, but it's all the ways we hurt each other when we think it doesn't count. Ali Fountain is a brilliant, unforgettable voice in fiction.
In a delicious twist, the haunted house in Ali Fountain’s seductive debut is a gleaming suburban McMansion. Does the house have evil intentions? Or does it simply draw out the darkness within the hearts of the girls drawn to it? At once a twisty page-turner and a keen meditation on the intimacies and cruelties traded among teenage girls, The House Where Nothing Hurts had me reading late into the night.
The House Where Nothing Hurts is a sharp-edged puzzle box of girlhood, beautifully written, equal parts fierce and vulnerable. Each twist is earned and exhilarating—I read the whole thing straight through, holding my breath.
Brilliant, visceral, and haunting, The House Where Nothing Hurts reads like the love child of Megan Abbott’s Dare Me and Showtime's Yellowjackets. This is horror at its slyest and smartest, a haunted house story that takes the brutal and seductive politics of girlhood and magnifies them until teenage social hierarchy becomes literal life and death, slights are wielded like kitchen knives in manicured hands, and belonging means the difference between safety and predation. This book is a knockout and required reading for fans of horror starring complex women.
Imagine a haunted house, but it's the things you said and did as a teenage girl; the things that were said and done to you. How claustrophobic and vicious and vital—and it is depicted perfectly in this book. I was captivated by the teenage protagonists, invincible in their closeness, their competitiveness and their casual cruelty. Threaded with nostalgia and regret, this is slippery novel that reveals the poison that can lurk in girlhood, and how, in the face of supernatural, sinister presence, sometimes it's humiliation—being left out —that is the thing we're most afraid of. A disturbing, giddy horror.
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