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

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Readers will revel in the delicate construction of Nolan’s sentences and fine attunement to the family’s inner lives Nolan describes the Greens as having “ordinary human failings, tragedies too routine to be of note”. But in this deeply tender book, she not only notes those tragedies, she also bears witness to them. To do so is an act of compassion. To do so with such grace is a genuine achievement.

Michal Shavit, publishing director at Jonathan Cape, acquired UK & Commonwealth rights from Harriet Moore at David Higham. 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.I will start off by saying that when I first read ‘Acts of Desperation’, I was not a fan yet I could not stop thinking about it. Nolan’s prose twisted at my skin, crawling into my subconscious with its brutal rendition of love. Because of this, I said I’d try her new novel, hoping for a better experience. While I will say it was better, this novel didn’t really grab me in the same way that Acts of Desperation did. Carmel is very much at the centre of the book, mother of Lucy and the reason why the family moved from Waterford to London in the first place. Richie is her half brother, who struggles with drink and finding a direction in life. Her father is John, distant and troubled by events in his own past. Mother Rose is the glue holding the family together.

In this book, a young girl is murdered at a London housing estate, and another young girl in the complex, Lucy, is suspected of having committed the crime. Lucy is taken into questioning, and her family members - her young mother Carmel, her alcoholic uncle Richie, and her detached grandfather John - wait over a stretch of 24 hours in a hotel while she's being detained. During this time, Tom, a reporter, is on a mission to break this story, and speaks with the family members one-on-one to learn more about the events that unfolded, but also about the dynamics of their family. What we get, then, are long sections in the past, giving us pieces to understand how this poor, Irish family ended up in this situation in London. At the heart of things is Carmel, a young woman who is “boiling inside”. Her sweeping teenage romance with twentysomething Derek ends when he leaves for Dublin. Shortly after, Carmel finds she is pregnant with Lucy. This prompts the family’s move to England, to escape shame and start afresh. 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. While Acts was a "messy woman/messy life" book (one of my faves) this was much more of a thriller/mystery. 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.

Determined to dig up a story of “familial depravity”, after Lucy is arrested, Tom and his red-top paper put up the rest of the Greens in a hotel, where the family are plied with drink. Each of them does, it transpires, have a tale to tell, but none of it is what Tom wants; rather, they unburden themselves of “vague darknesses” that, as far as he can see, hold “no narrative coherence when placed together”. But in contrast to his myopia, Nolan is charting clear, interconnected lines of cause and effect, and what starts out looking like a whodunit, perhaps even a procedural, slowly reveals itself to be a psychologically rich portrait of a family’s struggles, shames and failures. I zipped through Acts of Desperation in a day so was really anticipating reading Ordinary Human Failings and wow, what an incredibly different book. That I also zipped through in a day! The subject matter is tough and none of it is exactly a bundle of laughs. Megan Nolan doesn’t go in for fairy story endings for either her characters or the novel itself. The main theme of the book was well conveyed, and it is that devoting love, and time, to a child does not come easily to everybody. 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.

Dopo il suo esordio, Atti di sottomissione, che ha incontrato il giudizio favorevole di critica e pubblico, Nolan torna con una storia cruda, difficile, che tratta di dinamiche familiari. 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.Impressive and sad story about growing up in an estate, class, poverty, alcoholism, trauma throughout generations, and shame. Where you grow up, what family you come from, what class you are; this all forms you and determines the opportunities you’ll get in life, and your future. It’s almost impossible to change the life you was born into. It’s what you know, what you’ve learned and experienced. Nolan writes about all this with great insight and empathy, and this novel really moved me. I thought the character of Tom wasn’t of great importance to the story though. If I had a criticism, it’s that I didn’t love the inclusion of Tom’s character. While I appreciate the perspective offered by the tabloid media angle, Tom felt somewhat shoehorned into what was already a very strong family story. A gloomy, oppressive story, definitely not a poolside read, but with hints of hope and shades of Claire Keegan. 3.5-4/5⭐️ There’s a scene in the book where Richie goes on the drink, and you can see exactly what’s going to happen. It’s a bit of a minor heartbreak that you know decides the direction that lives can take. It’s a perfectly described scene that had me feeling the fear even before Richie did.

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 It’s often quoted, but Tolstoys ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’ really resonates in this book. And as Carmel says to Tom at one stageFor cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. Vintage has unveiled the second novel from Megan Nolan after publishing her début Acts of Desperation in 2021. We get the POV of Carmel (Lucy’s mother), Richie (Carmel’s brother) and Tom (Carmel’s father) as they pull apart the threads of their lives that brought the family to this point, from their origins in Waterford. This is a family story but also a commentary on social inequality and how the smallest of events can can tip an ordinary family into decline out of which it becomes nigh on impossible to claw.