Ordinary Human Failings: The heart-breaking, unflinching, compulsive new novel from the author of Acts of Desperation

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I’m sure I’m not alone in being slightly anxious that the story was going to be taken up with the death of a young child, but the story doesn’t go down that road. Rather, it’s a book about the secrets that people carry around with them, the private suffering hidden just below the surface. Carmel Her character Tom. Editor cut out 10,000 words. MN had originally expected him to be a bigger part of the story While Acts was a "messy woman/messy life" book (one of my faves) this was much more of a thriller/mystery.

By 2020 I had sold my novel and had the means to support myself and rent an apartment without constant worry, which was just as well as I’m not sure how I would have continued my previous cat-sitting, subletting way of life during the pandemic. I was certainly less than stoic in the face of isolation, but I embraced obligatory domesticity as best I could. After all, I had longed for it. I had wanted the burden of objects, of actually owning a bed, a decent wok and a television. And so I nested. Eventually, I got a cat. I didn’t feel happy but I felt something like contentment, and decided that this amounted to the same thing. Vintage has unveiled the second novel from Megan Nolan after publishing her début Acts of Desperation in 2021. In my experience authors tend to dislike questions about their fiction novels where the interviewer asks how much is autobiographical. Rachel Cusk and Knausgaard openly embrace the idea, but it seems to me that Megan Nolan is conflicted on the extent to which she both wants, and manages, to write about a world and lives which are outside her personal experiences. 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. Ordinary Human Failings is a novel about an Irish family and their lives uncovered as one of them is accused of killing a small girl on a London estate. In 1990, tabloid journalist Tom Hargreaves is investigating the disappearance of a young girl who then turns up dead, and the finger of blame is pointed at Lucy, who lives with her Irish immigrant family: her aloof mother Carmel, alcoholic uncle, and reclusive grandfather. As he gets closer to the family, he tries to unravel their stories into something resembling a news story, but that might not be the way it is going.One of the things I really liked about this book is that you really feel that some of the characters change. It’s fine for an author to say that a character has developed, but I really felt that Carmel reached an understanding, that there was a growth from her experiences. It felt both natural and satisfying. In the same vein, another of the characters didn’t, and disappeared into his own personal, comfortable sadness, and that felt genuine too. Devoured it in 2 days. Compulsively readable. I loved Carmel and Richie’s stories set in Waterford. She’s so good at capturing the little crazy details of people, I could relate to Tom always imagining the most inappropriate actions he could take at any one time, including having to restrain himself at the yearly pantomime as he pictured himself running on stage sand stripping naked. My only criticism was it tied a little too neatly at the end. I also think the incorporation of the title ‘ordinary human failings’ into the text was a bit much. A dead child on a London estate and the finger of suspicion pointing at one reclusive Irish family: the Greens...

I was talking with a friend lately about an impulse many writers have, not least myself, to finish pieces like this one with some ill-earned flourish of moral clarity. “All articles,” I said, “end in one of two ways: ‘And at the end of the day, who cares?’ or ‘At the end of the day, love is what matters.’” I am trying to resist that impulse. I am trying to avoid casting my indecision about what constitutes happiness as its own kind of moral victory. I am not going to smugly advise that the key to happiness lies in accepting its transience. It’s also a book about the absence of affection, and how that can mark you. It’s also about emigration and loneliness, about some of the issues facing women in Ireland. This second novel has a larger cast of leading characters, and this is welcome. The extended Green family provide a context for the main protagonist, Carmel, who would otherwise have been a straightforward extension of the nameless narrator in Acts of Desperation. Then there’s tabloid reporter Tom Hargreaves whose journalism career provides a well worked adjunct to the family drama unfolding. In quello spazio sperava che i contorni delle scuse che le aveva rivolto anni prima, così trascurabili nella loro forma parlata, diventassero evidenti e concreti. Le scuse che ancora non riusciva a esprimere in modo eloquente, quelle che non sarebbero mai finite e che lei rivolgeva a Lucy e alla bambina a cui aveva tolto la vita, e a se stessa, ogni mattina che si svegliava, pensando, Mi dispiace, mi dispiace, mi dispiace”…. In the summer of 2022, when life returned to something resembling its former self, my notion of contentment as an equivalent to happiness was pierced dramatically. As the world expanded again, so did my ideas about pleasure and meaning. For the first time in my life, I had real choices about how I wanted to live (an unspeakably privileged problem to complain about), and I struggled to understand whether happiness for me means stimulation and excitement or comfort and calm. For some people these things are not mutually exclusive, but for me they seem to be. It has always been one or the other, and now I have to choose.It was interesting to me that Nolan continued the theme of loneliness in the reflections of a seemingly very different character, journalist, Tom. There is redemption though for some characters (not all) and it’s of a believable and measured sort. What follows is a quiet portrait of a family in despair and the repercussions of intergenerational trauma. It's wonderfully astute, examining the forces that form a family: the habits, the sadness, the resentment, the resignation. Despite the emotional and melancholy tone, the overall effect is dazzling. Nolan's writing is powerful and nuanced, full of light and shade, and incredible insight.

I thought this was excellent. Megan Nolan is a really beautiful writer and brings so much depth to these characters in a relatively short space of time. Amanda Craig The finger of suspicion: Ordinary Human Failings, by Megan Nolan, reviewed A tabloid journalist desperate for a scoop pursues a young Irish mother whose daughter is rumoured to have killed a child. But is there any truth in the story? When a young girl in a London council estate dies, rumors start to fly about the Green family. After all, the girl was last seen playing with their daughter Lucy. And hasn’t Lucy always been a bit odd? Her mother Carmel is never around, her Uncle Richie a barely functioning alcoholic, and the Grandad John is reclusive and detached. The author dives into some complex themes: childhood trauma, alcoholism, teenage pregnancy, self-sabotage, sociopathic ambition, and more. She prises them open carefully, thoughtfully and without judgement. With topics like these, it's no surprise that this is a sad book, but it carries within it a thread of hope which is unbroken to the end. Ordinary Human Failings is a mature and considered sophomore novel, brimming with the same rich and insightful language as Nolan's debut. While Acts of Desperation felt quite interior (which I loved), this book really broadens its perspective, focusing on a number of well-realised characters.When a reporter, Tom Hargreaves, with a fierce ambition and a brisk disregard for the ‘peasants’ – ordinary people, his readers – stumbles across this 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’, he persuades his paper to put them up in a hotel with all bar expenses paid.