Ordinary Human Failings, Megan Nolan
Ordinary Human Failings, Megan Nolan
11 Rating(s)
List: $18.99 | Sale: $13.29
Club: $9.49

Ordinary Human Failings
A Novel

Author: Megan Nolan

Narrator: Jessica Regan

Unabridged: 5 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/06/2024


Synopsis

When a 10-year-old child is suspected of a violent crime, her family must face the truth about their past in this haunting, propulsive, psychologically keen story about class, trauma, and family secrets from “huge literary talent” (Karl Ove Knausgaard) and internationally bestselling author Megan Nolan.

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 seems set to rise when he stumbles across a sensational scoop: a dead child on a London estate, grieving parents beloved across the neighborhood, and the finger of suspicion pointing at one reclusive family of Irish immigrants and “bad apples”: the Greens.

At their heart sits Carmel: beautiful, otherworldly, broken, and once destined for a future beyond her circumstances until life - and love - got in her way. Crushed by failure and surrounded by disappointment, there's nowhere for her to go and no chance of escape. Now, with the police closing in on a suspect and the tabloids hunting their monster, she must confront the secrets and silences that have trapped her family for so many generations.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Flo on March 05, 2024

Update : Now longlisted for 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction - Did I already read the winner? I'm so happy to see this on the list. We must refuse to let art and life be treated as news headlines or any other media product. This novel begins with the possible murder of a child by another child, a possib......more

Goodreads review by Meike on April 17, 2024

Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024 Irish social realism at its best: While the description of the plot - ten-year-old girl is suspected to have killed another child - suggests some thriller, crime or even true crime novel, this set-up only serves as a framing device for an intense, psyc......more

Goodreads review by Hannah on July 11, 2024

Not the book I was expecting, but that's a me problem. Check out my Women's Prize Deep Dive on BookTube at Hello, Bookworm.📚🐛 "Theirs were ordinary human failings, tragedies too routine to be of note." What I thought this book would be: A twisty literary thriller in which an ambitious reporter......more

Goodreads review by Jennifer on August 02, 2024

I was disappointed in this. Maybe because it was sold to me as a more efficiently edited Bee Sting? I loved The Bee Sting, it was one of the most immersive books I’ve recently read. My interest level here waxed and waned with the chosen character POV. I loved it at first — there were 5-star perspect......more