Nothing Can Hurt You Now (Pushkin Vertigo) - Softcover

Buch 28 von 33: Pushkin Vertigo

Campos, Simone

 
9781782278191: Nothing Can Hurt You Now (Pushkin Vertigo)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1782278192 ISBN 13: 9781782278191
Verlag: Pushkin Vertigo, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

A page-turning Brazilian debut thriller about a missing model living a double life as a sex worker, and the sister whose frantic search uncovers more secrets and suspects

A punchy thriller with a fiery feminist perspective, perfect for fans of Marie Rutkoski

A furiously contemporary and vibrant thriller that crackles with danger — this gripping and utterly addictive new feminist thriller will hook you from the first page and keep you up all night.

Lucinda has lived her whole life in the shadow of her glamorous and outgoing high-end model sister Viviana. But when Viviana suddenly disappears on a trip to São Paulo, Lucinda drops everything to track her down.

Met with indifference from the police, Lucinda joins forces with Viviana's girlfriend Graziane to launch her own investigation. When she discovers that her sister had a thriving career as a sex worker, the list of possible suspects widens.

Then a cryptic text suggests that Viviana is still alive but being held hostage. With the minutes ticking by, Lucinda and Graziane must track down the men from Viviana's past to discover who might want to do her harm.

This feisty thriller offers a fast-paced, very contemporary — and often very funny — politically conscious adventure.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Simone Campos lives in Rio de Janeiro where she was born in 1983. Her literary debut, No Shopping, was released when she was 17, and since then she has published one short-story collection and four novels. She is also the translator of several English-language books into Brazilian Portuguese, including Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train and Margaret Atwood's The Testaments. This is her first thriller.

Rahul Bery translates from Spanish and Portuguese and is based in Cardiff. He has translated novels by David Trueba and Afonso Cruz, and his shorter translations have appeared in The White Review, the TLS, Granta, Words Without Borders, Freeman's and Partisan Hotel. He was the British Library's translator in residence from 2018-2019.

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Prologue
The billboard on the newspaper stand advertising the best wi-fi in Brazil seemed to bear no relation to the woman illustrating it, with her beaming smile and milky-white skin. She was smiling at the horizon, wearing a dainty white blouse and looked like she was about to start talking. Lucinda imagined the snap being generated almost by chance during a change of pose at the shoot, as the model moved from a ¾ profile to almost full frontal. The photographer must have pointed over to where she should be looking – into eternity – she had obeyed and voilà, the perfect photo, to be chosen from a multitude of others in which a thousand other girls in a thousand other nearly perfect poses would be passed over after test shoots of them standing next to the advertisement text.
              Lucinda’s attention was drawn to the corner of the image – outside it. At the edge of the stand, half-hidden by a strategically placed lamppost, a very pale young girl with brown hair and glasses was vigorously rubbing her face. Lucinda quickly realised that the girl was not alone and that she was rubbing her face in protest at the kiss her tall, slim, brown-skinned boyfriend had just planted on her nose. Her nose! The nerve! But her protests seemed to be in vain: the boy was determined to kiss unorthodox parts of her face in public and was now laying into her cheek – licking it! – before immediately returning to the nose.
              What… am I looking at? thought Lucinda, accelerating as soon as the lights changed. She couldn’t get delayed here; she had to go flat out to get to that isolated point in the middle of the highway. Perhaps in doing so she would find her sister.
              Viviana was not the woman in the advert. The woman in the advert was white and a redhead; her sister, like her, was mestizo: straight black hair, Indigenous features, coppery-golden skin. She got her bronzed tone from sunbathing at the local park or country club; she didn’t like beaches. Lucinda spent all day in the office or at the studio, feeding off artificial light.
              Her sister was in advertisements, but not the kind that appear on billboards, or on TV, or any other high-end media. She had seen her sister on the back of a bus and in a local newspaper; she frequently adorned web portals and occasionally also dentists’ brochures (‘Your smile is your calling card!’).
              Anyone who asked Viviana ‘What do you do?’ would be unable to tell from the casual way in which she replied ‘Model’ that there was even the slightest hint of frustration with the fact that her face was considered perfectly fine for illustrating materials on the sex lives of modern couples, healthy food and the latest fashion trends, but not for selling nationwide broadband, like the redhead from the billboard. And it never, ever got her a speaking part in a commercial, let alone a spot on the catwalk.
              It hadn’t always been that way.
             
***
              Every afternoon Viviana (12) and Lucinda (16) would study French together at the language academy. The English they learnt at school was good enough, they didn’t need any extra practice. The school they went to, private and highly esteemed, was obsessed with the word ‘solidarity’ and was always organising events, group assignments and giveaways based around that theme. A while later, this motto would be forgotten and replaced with ‘entrepreneurship’, a new ideal for the millennium, to be coveted by every student who wanted to achieve something in life. Before these two the word had been ‘One Earth’.
              It was 1998. People still bought CDs, and they were all too familiar with the unique pain under the fingernails from trying to tear off the antitheft labels stuck to the packaging. It was also common knowledge that the batteries in a discman always wore out before the CD playing inside it. Whenever the sisters were in the car together Viviana would use good behaviour to bribe her mother into letting her choose the radio station, which would invariably be playing ‘How Bizarre’ or ‘Macarena’. That’s right: everyone – children, teenagers and adults – listened to the radio, not only in the car but also at home; and some people, generally older ones, still listened to Voice of Brazil every day.  Suits listened to live business news, the traffic updates during rush hour and the football on Sundays. Poorer people listened to baile funk on Imprensa FM if they were young, 98 FM if they were romantics and Copacabana if they were evangelicals. That was how you heard new music, stayed informed, felt part of a community of people who couldn’t always access the remote or didn’t have a second TV at home. It was important.
              On that occasion the Spice Girls were playing, and Viviana was singing along quietly in the back seat of the car, symbolically holding her Discman for effect. Lucinda, who was riding in the front with their mother, said:
              ‘I’m not going to French wearing makeup.’
              ‘Lucy, wash your face and go.’
              ‘But I don’t know what kind of gunk they’ll put on my hair, it’ll be all gross… Anyway, I’ll be shattered.’
              Cássia almost smiled as she repeated her daughter’s words:
              ‘Shattered…’
              They arrived at the studio. Cássia began to deploy her perfect parallel parking. Lucinda was tense, her body frozen stiff in her seat, her hands touching the space beneath her knees. Looking backwards as she completed the manoeuvre, Cássia said:
              ‘Ok, I’ve got to get to the court now. Vivi will stay with you, Lucy, and when you’re done, page me. And order a cab back. No buses.’
              Lucinda nodded and pressed her lips together, looking straight ahead:
              ‘Ok.’
              Viviana showed no reaction. She asked for some money to buy a Mupy soya drink at the bakery opposite and was given it.
              The sisters went up in the lift.  In the lobby a pretty blonde girl, probably from the talent agency and already in full make-up, was sitting...

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Verlag
Pushkin Vertigo
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1782278192
ISBN 13 
9781782278191
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
216
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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