Ordinary Human Failings Synopsis
It's 1990 in London and Tom Hargreaves has it all: a burgeoning career as a reporter, fierce ambition, and a brisk disregard for the 'peasants' - ordinary people, his readers, easy tabloid fodder. His star looks set to rise when he stumbles across a scoop: a dead child on a London estate, grieving parents loved across the neighbourhood, and the finger of suspicion pointing at one reclusive family of Irish immigrants and 'bad apples': the Greens.
At their heart sits Carmel: beautiful, broken, and once destined for a future beyond her circumstances until life - and love - got in her way. Now, with the police closing in on a suspect and the tabloids hunting their monster, Carmel must confront the secrets and silences that have trapped her family for so many generations.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781787332508 |
| Publication date: |
13th July 2023 |
| Author: |
Megan Nolan |
| Publisher: |
Jonathan Cape Ltd an imprint of Vintage Publishing |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| Pagination: |
218 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Literary Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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Megan Nolan Press Reviews
'Megan Nolan's debut novel saw her grouped with other Irish millennial women such as Sally Rooney and Naoise Dolan. But with her ambitious and insightful second novel, Ordinary Human Failings, Nolan makes it clear she is not a manifestation of a type, but rather a writer to be read on her own terms' - Financial Times
'One masterful novel... Nolan has excelled herself: Ordinary Human Failings is a raw, pulsing thing... A writer who's still at the start of what promises to be a splendid career. Ordinary Human Failings is a bold and beautiful second novel... daring in all the right ways, but compassionate when it needs to be' - Daily Telegraph
'There is something wonderfully ordinary about this book... Nolan has set out to make a plain three-legged stool rather than an ornate grandfather clock. The corridors of contemporary literature are stuffed with grandfather clocks with faulty mechanisms. How much more valuable is this modest, well-made thing' - Sunday Times
'As much of a compulsive read as the first novel' - The Times
'A subtle, accomplished and lyrical study of familial and intergenerational despair, a quiet book about quiet lives... An excellent novel: politically astute, furious and compassionate... A genuine achievement' - Guardian
'The millennial author everyone should be watching right now' - Daily Telegraph
'Megan Nolan is one of the brightest young things around' - The Times,Summer Reads of 2023*
'A feat of narrative compression that showcases Nolan's talent' - Daily Mail
'An ambitious novel, and the story is told beautifully' - Independent
'Heartbreaking, society-examining stuff' - Vogue
About Megan Nolan
Megan Nolan was born in 1990 in Waterford, Ireland and is currently based in London. Her essays and reviews have been published by the New York Times, White Review, Guardian and Frieze amongst others. Her debut novel, Acts of Desperation, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2021 and was the recipient of a Betty Trask Award, shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize.
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