Some people heal with prayer. Others use punchlines.
Maeve Gallagher is a grief therapist by day and a stand-up comic by night, holding the hands of dying children, comforting broken families, and turning heartbreak into punchlines for strangers who never see the grief coming.
But when Danny, her favourite patient, dies on a rain-soaked morning, Maeve starts to unravel. Her stage persona cracks. Her detachment fails. Then her younger brother Liam spirals into an addiction crisis, pulling her back into the family trauma she’s been running from her whole adult life.
With the help of Jamie, her flatmate, best friend, and battle-hardened social worker, Maeve tries to hold it all together. But grief has teeth. And staying alive beside the people you love can sometimes be the hardest work of all.
A terminally funny comedy novel by Damian Jay Clay: The Death Work is a sharp, unsentimental novel about burnout, brotherhood, sisterhood, gallows humour, and what it takes to survive the ones you lose.