No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know about Domestic Violence Can Kill Us Hardcover

A NEW YORK TIMES, ESQUIRE AND ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Love, desire, intimacy — we all know what these are meant to look like. But what happens when they descend into violence?

Award-winning journalist Rachel Louise Snyder once believed all the common misconceptions about domestic violence: that it happen to an unlucky few; that it’s a matter of poor choices; that if things are dire enough, victims will leave. Her perception changed when she began talking to the victims and perpetrators whose stories she tells in this book.

Fearlessly reporting from the front lines of what the WHO has deemed a ‘global epidemic’, Snyder interviews men who have murdered their families, women who have nearly been murdered, and a range of professionals in advocacy and law enforcement, painting a vivid and nuanced picture of what happens when relationships go badly wrong. The problem is on the rise: an average of 137 women are killed by familial violence worldwide every day. Two women die at the hands of their partners each week in the UK. In the US, domestic homicides have increased by 32 per cent since 2017. And in South Africa, a woman is now killed every three hours. No Visible Bruises tells the intimate stories behind these headlines, and lays out the society-wide changes that are urgently needed to stop domestic violence in its tracks.

‘Explosive’ THE GUARDIAN

"A seminal and breathtaking account of why home is the most dangerous place to be a woman . . . A tour de force." EVE ENSLER, author of The Vagina Monologues

“Powerful…No Visible Bruises is a call for action, not a cry of despair.” SUNDAY TIMES

Extraordinary. --New York Times,"Editors' Choice"

"Gut-wrenching, required reading." --Esquire

Compulsively readable . . . It will save lives. --Washington Post

"Essential, devastating reading." --Cheryl Strayed, New York Times Book Review

An award-winning journalist's intimate investigation of the true scope of domestic violence, revealing how the roots of America's most pressing social crises are buried in abuse that happens behind closed doors.

We call it domestic violence. We call it private violence. Sometimes we call it intimate terrorism. But whatever we call it, we generally do not believe it has anything at all to do with us, despite the World Health Organization deeming it a "global epidemic." In America, domestic violence accounts for 15 percent of all violent crime, and yet it remains locked in silence, even as its tendrils reach unseen into so many of our most pressing national issues, from our economy to our education system, from mass shootings to mass incarceration to #MeToo. We still have not taken the true measure of this problem.

In No Visible Bruises, journalist Rachel Louise Snyder gives context for what we don't know we're seeing. She frames this urgent and immersive account of the scale of domestic violence in our country around key stories that explode the common myths--that if things were bad enough, victims would just leave; that a violent person cannot become nonviolent; that shelter is an adequate response; and most insidiously that violence inside the home is a private matter, sealed from the public sphere and disconnected from other forms of violence. Through the stories of victims, perpetrators, law enforcement, and reform movements from across the country, Snyder explores the real roots of private violence, its far-reaching consequences for society, and what it will take to truly address it.

© 2021 W. F. Howes Ltd (Audiobook): 9781004015979

Release date

Audiobook: 18 March 2021