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amongst_the_bookstacks 's review for:
Show Me Where It Hurts
by Claire Gleeson
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Some books don’t just tell a story; they carve out a space inside you, fill it with sorrow and love in equal measure, and leave you a little more broken, a little more aware. Show Me Where It Hurts by Claire Gleeson is one of those books. It’s not just about tragedy—it’s about the fragile, gossamer-thin line between love and devastation, and how, when that line finally snaps, it feels impossible to trace back the moments that led to the breaking point.
I grew up with a severely mentally ill father, and reading this book was like peering into an alternate version of my own life, one where the fault lines cracked just a little differently. It’s a book that makes you wonder, how close have I come to that precipice? How many times have I nodded along, like Rachel, acknowledging others while feeling entirely absent from my own life? “She felt she spent her life nodding at people now. She had become something almost entirely passive.” And how many times have I questioned whether love can outlast the wreckage, whether there’s anything left to hold onto once the person you love has become someone else entirely?
Gleeson structures the novel with a dual timeline, letting us see Rachel’s life both before and after her husband, Tom, makes an unthinkable decision. The ‘before’ is filled with aching tenderness, with a love so intoxicating it makes Rachel feel invincible. “They kiss in the long grass for what feels like hours, and when he pulls back finally his face is flushed and the look in his eyes makes her feel more powerful than she has ever felt before.” But even in these early pages, there’s an undercurrent of something inevitable, a quiet sense that the darkness is gathering at the edges.
And then there’s the ‘after’—a world where grief is not just an emotion but a physical weight, pressing down on Rachel, pinning her to the bed in the mornings. “Some mornings she woke with an inertia that was a blanket of dead air pinning her to the bed, a lumpen weight upon her chest.” It is in these moments that Gleeson’s writing is at its most devastating, stripping Rachel’s pain down to its rawest form. And yet, despite everything, Rachel’s feelings for Tom are not easy to categorize. “She cannot say any more that she loves him; nobody could ask that of her. But she finds that she does not hate him either. There is so little of him left to hate.”
What makes this novel so extraordinary is its refusal to fall into easy answers. It does not offer closure, because real life doesn’t. It does not paint Tom as a monster or Rachel as a saint. Instead, it explores the spaces in between—the moments of love that still exist in the ruins, the guilt that comes from feeling something other than misery, the quiet realization that the world will continue turning no matter how much you want it to stop. “Now she finds there is something almost comforting in the knowledge that the world was here, doing much the same things as always, long before she arrived on it, and will continue to turn on its axis aeons after she has gone.”
I have read many books about mental illness, love, and loss, but few have moved me the way this one has. It is astonishing, thought-provoking, and unbearably human. Claire Gleeson has written something deeply special. A story of love, in all its devastating, complicated, unshakeable forms. And it is one I will never forget.
I grew up with a severely mentally ill father, and reading this book was like peering into an alternate version of my own life, one where the fault lines cracked just a little differently. It’s a book that makes you wonder, how close have I come to that precipice? How many times have I nodded along, like Rachel, acknowledging others while feeling entirely absent from my own life? “She felt she spent her life nodding at people now. She had become something almost entirely passive.” And how many times have I questioned whether love can outlast the wreckage, whether there’s anything left to hold onto once the person you love has become someone else entirely?
Gleeson structures the novel with a dual timeline, letting us see Rachel’s life both before and after her husband, Tom, makes an unthinkable decision. The ‘before’ is filled with aching tenderness, with a love so intoxicating it makes Rachel feel invincible. “They kiss in the long grass for what feels like hours, and when he pulls back finally his face is flushed and the look in his eyes makes her feel more powerful than she has ever felt before.” But even in these early pages, there’s an undercurrent of something inevitable, a quiet sense that the darkness is gathering at the edges.
And then there’s the ‘after’—a world where grief is not just an emotion but a physical weight, pressing down on Rachel, pinning her to the bed in the mornings. “Some mornings she woke with an inertia that was a blanket of dead air pinning her to the bed, a lumpen weight upon her chest.” It is in these moments that Gleeson’s writing is at its most devastating, stripping Rachel’s pain down to its rawest form. And yet, despite everything, Rachel’s feelings for Tom are not easy to categorize. “She cannot say any more that she loves him; nobody could ask that of her. But she finds that she does not hate him either. There is so little of him left to hate.”
What makes this novel so extraordinary is its refusal to fall into easy answers. It does not offer closure, because real life doesn’t. It does not paint Tom as a monster or Rachel as a saint. Instead, it explores the spaces in between—the moments of love that still exist in the ruins, the guilt that comes from feeling something other than misery, the quiet realization that the world will continue turning no matter how much you want it to stop. “Now she finds there is something almost comforting in the knowledge that the world was here, doing much the same things as always, long before she arrived on it, and will continue to turn on its axis aeons after she has gone.”
I have read many books about mental illness, love, and loss, but few have moved me the way this one has. It is astonishing, thought-provoking, and unbearably human. Claire Gleeson has written something deeply special. A story of love, in all its devastating, complicated, unshakeable forms. And it is one I will never forget.