‘The story of a woman forced to rebuild her life after, in one explosive moment,
her husband destroys everything they’ve built together’
– Show Me Where It Hurts
[ About Show Me Where It Hurts ]
How do you survive the unsurvivable?
Rachel lives with her husband Tom and their two children: it’s the ordinary family life she always thought she’d have. All of that changes in an instant – when Tom runs the family car off the road, seeking to end his own life, and take his wife and children with him. Rachel is left to pore over the wreckage to try and understand what happened – to find a way to go on living afterwards.
What emerges is a snapshot of what it’s like to live alongside someone who is suffering, how you keep yourself afloat when the person you love is drowning, and how you survive irreparable loss.
Impossible to turn away from, Show Me Where It Hurts is a compelling, heartbreaking and ultimately life-affirming story of recovery and unexpected hope.
[ My Review ]
Show Me Where It Hurts by Claire Gleeson published April 10th with Sceptre and is described as ’emotionally arresting fiction’ with good reason.
A debut that can have such an enormous impact is a special one and Claire Gleeson has taken every mother’s worst nightmare and written a novel that is spectacular, yet beyond heartwrenching. There are no punches spared as the reader is immediately immersed into an unimaginable terror when a family’s journey ends in horror.
Rachel, Tom and their two small children are travelling through the Wicklow countryside, after a visit with Tom’s parents, when Tom swerves the car off the road. The raw devastation that inevitably follows is beyond anything I could possibly conceive as a wife and a mother.
In the chapters that follow we get flashbacks back to when Rachel and Tom met and of the paths they chose together as their relationship progressed from dating to marriage and children. Interwoven are additional chapters of Rachel and how she is coping after the horror of the tragedy. As we jump back and forth we get insights into Tom’s personality as Rachel tries to figure out where it all went wrong. Rachel carries an inner strength that has stood her through very difficult days but the guilt that she endures every minute of every day is impossible to fathom.
Tom had been a loving husband hadn’t he? Were there changes that she missed? Should she have had more patience with him? As a nurse herself should she have been more aware of his decline? The many questions we as readers ask are exactly the thoughts racing through Rachel’s mind. How did she miss it? How did she not see it coming? Claire Gleeson has done an incredible job at building Rachel and Tom’s characters. Over the years we observe and take note of behavioural changes that may seem obvious to an outsider but, when you’re in the thick of it, you can be blind to.
Show Me Where It Hurts is without doubt a devastating read yet there are glimmers of hope as Rachel ploughs on and learns the art of survival through finding comfort where it finds her. It is difficult to pick a word to describe this novel. How can you say something this harrowing is beautiful? But it is. The human spirit is a phenomenal thing and as Rachel considers her past, present and possible future in a new world, her strength and determination is a comfort and a source of some solace.
An emotionally strung-out reader you will be, but fear not, you will also grasp onto the hope and sheer bravery of this amazing individual. Show Me Where It Hurts is a breathtaking debut, a novel that will leave its mark, an achingly beautiful story written with the most sensitive of pens and with enormous compassion and empathy.
[Thank you to Hachette Ireland for a copy of Show Me Where It Hurts in exchange for my honest review ]
[ Bio ]
Claire Gleeson is from Dublin, where she lives with her young family and works as a GP. Her short stories have been short- and long-listed for numerous prizes. In 2021 she was awarded a Words Ireland literary mentorship while she worked on the first draft of Show Me Where It Hurts, which went on to be a runner-up at the Irish Writers’ Centre Novel Fair 2023.
Great review, Mairéad, This sounds like a very difficult, emotional story. Depression is such a terrible thing.