A Family Tragedy Examined With Real Tenderness
Claire Gleeson asks what remains after one unthinkable act destroys a family's shared life. Rachel's attempt to understand her husband and live on gives the novel its force, making it a difficult but deeply compelling choice for readers who value literary fiction with emotional courage.
An Post Irish Book Award Winner 2025
Show Me Where It Hurts
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A Family Tragedy Examined With Real Tenderness
Claire Gleeson asks what remains after one unthinkable act destroys a family's shared life. Rachel's attempt to understand her husband and live on gives the novel its force, making it a difficult but deeply compelling choice for readers who value literary fiction with emotional courage.
- Book Synopsis
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Ideal for readers who:
- Seek literary fiction willing to look directly at trauma and its aftermath.
- Are drawn to novels shaped by one devastating act and the need to understand it.
- Would value a family story focused on survival after an attempted murder-suicide.
- Prefer emotionally serious reading that is painful, compelling and humane.
A 2025 BOOK TO WATCH IN THE IRISH TIMES, SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, AND RTÉ GUIDE
'A searingly beautiful novel 'Jennie Godfrey, author of The List of Suspicious Things
'Outstanding, and has lingered in my head for a very long time 'Prima
How do you survive the unsurvivable?
Rachel lives with her husband Tom and their two children: it's the comfortable 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 utterly compelling and heartbreaking.
It is a story of recovery and unexpected hope.
- About The Author
- 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.
- Product Details
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- ISBN
- 9781399734738
- Format
- Paperback
- Publisher
- Sceptre, (10 April 2025)
- Number of Pages
- 256
- Weight
- 319 grams
- Language
- English
- Dimensions
- 232 x 150 x 20 mm
- Categories: