Or maybe - as she has long believed - there is something wrong with her. So why is everything broken? Why is Martha - on the edge of 40 - friendless, practically jobless and so often sad? And why did Patrick decide to leave? Maybe she is just too sensitive, someone who finds it harder to be alive than most people. A gift, her mother once said, not everybody gets. And it's about how we write and rewrite the stories we tell ourselves about our lives - and try to find a happy ending.Įveryone tells Martha Friel she is clever and beautiful, a brilliant writer who has been loved every day of her adult life by one man, her husband Patrick. It's about how the world treats disabled people. The Coward is about hurt and forgiveness. How can he stop himself careering out of control? As he tries to piece his life together again, he looks back over his past - the tragedy that blasted his family apart, why he ran away, the damage he's caused himself and others - and starts to wonder whether, maybe, things don't always have to stay broken after all. Add in a shoplifting habit, an addiction to painkillers and the fact that total strangers now treat him like he's an idiot, it's a recipe for self-destruction. Worse still, he's forced to live back home with the father he hasn't spoken to in ten years. Confined to a 'giant roller-skate', he finds himself with neither money nor job. After a car accident Jarred discovers he'll never walk again.

Question: What's worse than being in a wheelchair? Answer: Being a f**k-up in a wheelchair.

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