Claire Gleeson’s quietly compelling debut novel, Show Me Where It Hurts, opens with a horrifying scene. Rachel and Tom are an average busy married couple with two small children. Tom is an architect whose business has been decimated by the economic crash, and Rachel is a nurse. The loss of Tom’s business has left them struggling to cope, but managing. On a routine drive home from Sunday dinner at Tom’s parents’ house, Tom deliberately drives the family car off the road, his intention to kill them all. While their children die, Tom and Rachel survive, and this moment becomes the fulcrum on which the story deftly seesaws back and forth in time.
While the dramatic opening grabs the reader’s attention, Gleeson approaches the subject matter with the necessary sensitivity and restraint. She quickly shifts focus to the reasons behind Tom’s actions. The ‘Before’ and ‘After’ structure allows Gleeson to drop missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle into place, which adds suspense and tension to what might otherwise be a too-harrowing narrative. In the ‘Before’ sections, Gleeson reveals the various elements that contributed to Tom’s actions. In the ‘After’ part of the story she focuses on Rachel, her initial survival and her gradual recovery in the aftermath of her children’s deaths.
There is real insight in Gleeson’s analysis of Tom’s struggles (she is also a GP). While she excels in plotting the tiny details of Tom’s descent, Rachel’s grief and recovery at times felt a little too linear, and her level of empathy for her husband jarred with this reader (although Gleeson certainly makes us understand why Rachel might feel this way).
This book was a runner-up at the 2023 Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair and while the subject matter might be off-putting for some, it would be a shame to pass this book by because it is about so much more than the horrifying tragedy at its heart. Gleeson is telling a multifaceted story about our society here. She is looking at everything from male shame and stigma around depression to the pressure to succeed in modern Ireland and the slippery, changeable nature of mental illness, along with the incomprehensible strength and painstaking determination it takes to rebuild a life after a devastating loss.
One of the most impressive parts of the book is how Gleeson shows the fallout of Tom’s crime on his wider family. The descriptions of his mother’s life and her conflicted feelings towards her son were genuinely heart-rending.
It’s a sign of Gleeson’s skill that by the end of the book you feel sorry for almost all of the characters. Having remained so coolly restrained for the majority of the novel, the book ends on a hopeful, even sentimental note, but by that point in the narrative the reader is grateful for the glimmer. An understated and impressive debut that will keep book clubs talking for hours.
