Ordinary Human Failings: A Novel

· Sold by Little, Brown
2 reviews
Ebook
224
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

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).

 FINALIST FOR THE FALLON BOOK CLUB SELECTION 

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.
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). FINALIST FOR THE FALLON BOOK CLUB SELECTI...

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Ratings and reviews

2 reviews
Lee
February 18, 2024
So far, not living up to the hype of the review I read in the Washington Post. Half way through and not sure I'll finish. Too much delving into tangential characters and their back stories while leaving the main thread for just too many pages. Usually by this time in a book, I can't put it down, but this one just isn't that compelling compared with other book of a similar genre.
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About the author

Megan Nolan is an Irish writer based in New York. Her debut novel, Acts of Desperation, was an international bestseller, the recipient of a Betty Trask Award, and nominated for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Her second, Ordinary Human Failings, was nominated for the George Orwell prize for Political Fiction, the Nero Prize, and the Women's Prize, among others. She is the 2025 Sewanee School of Letters John Grammer Fellow. 
 
Megan Nolan is an Irish writer based in New York. Her debut novel, Acts of Desperation, was an international bestseller, the recipient of a Betty Trask Award, and nominated for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Her second, Ordinary Human Failings, was nom...

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