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3.5 

Ordinary Human Failings

By Megan Nolan
Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan digital book - Fable

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Publisher Description

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.

185 Reviews

3.5
“‘Really, who would care about a family like theirs? Theirs were ordinary human failings, tragedies too routine to be of note.’”

About Megan Nolan

Megan Nolan was born in 1990 in Waterford, Ireland. Her essays and reviews have been published by the New York TimesWhite Review, Guardian and Frieze amongst others. Her debut novel, Acts of Desperation, 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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