The Nobody Code
A Novel
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- Précommander
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- Sortie prévue le 11 août 2026
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- 9,49 €
Description de l’éditeur
A spellbinding novel steeped in New England folklore following a woman who leaves her marriage to uncover who’s punishing her for the crimes of her adolescence—for fans of Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods and Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You.
"Spellbinding." —Maria Hummel, author of Still Lives and Goldenseal
"Audacious and dazzling." ―Jedediah Berry, author of The Naming Song
One fateful night in the 1990s, Dinah, a small-town Vermont teen, sneaks out on a mission to jump on the neighbor’s forbidden trampoline. There she comes upon a handsome, seductive boy named Rex, who leads a group of underground vigilante teenagers who call themselves "Nobody." Dinah falls under Rex's sway and joins the group. She'll do anything to impress him, even when it's dangerous. After an incident orchestrated by Rex results in steep repercussions for herself and others, Dinah leaves the town and her adolescent years behind.
Now, twenty years later, Rex has long vanished. Dinah is married with a baby and a job at the local zoo. But she is not at peace, and it seems as if someone from the past won’t let her go quietly. When mysterious clues start appearing, animals at the zoo go missing, and an old conspirator barely survives a suspicious fire, Dinah’s paranoia gets the best of her, and she takes the baby and drives back to her hometown to investigate. Although Dinah reunites with old friends, the forces out to get her make it painfully clear: Dinah must repent and face her enemies alone.
“The Nobody Code is that rare feast: a novel that astonishes on every page, twists and turns with wildness, beauty, and delight, and makes you, ultimately, question the stories you’ve been told about your life. A mystery that is also about adolescence, fairy tales, friendship, and love; I read this book with wonder and pleasure and finished it in tears—in awe of this strange, sublime, and haunting masterpiece.” ―Robin MacArthur, author of Half Wild
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gault (Goodnight Stranger) explores coming-of-age, the power of stories, and vigilante justice in this ambitious literary mystery. When zookeeper Dinah was a teenage outcast in Vermont, she joined an underground group who called themselves "Nobody" and meted out ruthless vengeance on bullies. A decade later in New York City, the group's leader (and Dinah's first love), Rex, abruptly reentered her life before disappearing. Now another decade has gone by, Dinah has a new baby, and she's fallen out of touch with Rex. When she's wrongly accused of mismanaging animals at the zoo, Dinah finds evidence suggesting Rex might have been involved. Then she learns that a fire at the hospital where her mother works has sent a member of Nobody to the ICU. Dinah returns to Vermont to figure out if her teenage actions have come home to roost, and why. Gault dusts the proceedings with light mysticism—Dinah enters fugue states in which animals speak to her—but stops short of full magical realism, grounding the story's emotional stakes while lending it added psychological depth. Though the author's explorations of guilt can be heavy-handed, she delivers an engrossing mystery that defies easy categorization.
