Megan Nolan

***SHORTLISTED FOR FICTION - 2023 NERO BOOK AWARDS***

After the death of a young girl, the finger of suspicion is pointing at one reclusive family…

‘Gripping… A triumph’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘Heartbreaking’ VOGUE

It’s 1990 in London and, after the death of a young girl on an estate, the finger of suspicion is pointing at one reclusive Irish family: the Greens.

At their heart sits Carmel: beautiful, other-worldly, and once destined for a future beyond her circumstances until life – and love – got in her way. Now, as the scandal unfolds and the tabloids hunt their monster, she must confront the secrets and silences that have trapped her family for so many generations.

***A DAILY TELEGRAPH, TIMES, NEW STATESMAN AND SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023***

‘Daring, brilliant… Bold and beautiful’ DAILY TELEGRAPH

‘Ambitious and original’ DAVID NICHOLLS

‘A compulsive read’ THE TIMES

Ordinary Human Failings

bianca

but there were things she remembered, moments that could barely even be called memories they were of so little consequence, the feeling of biting down into a butter and sugar sandwich at the beach and not knowing immediately if the crunch was sand or grains of sweetness which reminded her that, yes, it had been good, yes, they were a family, and sometimes a very happy one.

There is no secret, . . . or else there are hundreds of them, and none of them interesting enough for you. The secret is that we’re a family, we’re just an ordinary family, with ordinary unhappiness like yours.

He looked at this picture of great, humbling beauty, at the gentle lolloping clouds sliding down into the sunset, and the exquisite peace of the ocean, the sight of the few people still bathing bobbing stoically around, and he felt a devastating lowering within himself.

It was devastating not because it was violent but because it was the very opposite. The feeling was slow and natural and utterly complete. Undeniable, total, and truthful. The feeling was certainty of the essential malevolence of things, certainty that they would only ever be so. There was darkness beneath or inside everything, and even beautiful things were irredeemable because they only acted to obscure but never to transform. The certainty rose and expanded and something changed in him forever as he sensed the indefinite months and years ahead mired in hopelessness.

The drinking, the not-drinking, would change nothing of this despair which was a part of him and always would be. It was a terrifying and liberating idea.

When he closed his eyes he thought how lonely he was, and his eyes stung with the thought itself. Loneliness had always existed in two distinct and equally painful dimensions for [him], once as the missing of people itself, and twice as the idea abstracted. To think of wanting others and not being able to have them was a sad enough concept that it could move him to tears even when he wasn’t experiencing it himself, and he was experiencing it himself now.

There’s no special rule that says it has to be dark when you have a drink, or light when you start work. Good morning, goodnight, happy Christmas – who cares? Live how you want to, when you want to. That’s the trick.

He was buzzed upstairs and received with a rousing round of whooping and shouts of Here he is, the man himself!, a welcome phrase which had always struck [him] as almost unbearably cheering, that feeling of everyone being happy to see you, telling you the night had been lacking something before your arrival.

Oh God, oh God, he was choking out the words as though they disgusted him, oh God, don’t let me die on my own, and looked at Tom desperately as he said it, as though he were God, as though he could prevent it.

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

She was learning, in the unwanted clarity which had been thrust upon her, that she could not hurt the thing inside her without also hurting herself. She found with surprise that there was still some fragment of defiance which made her want to live.

The six days between her falling in love and seeing him again passed with beautiful agonising length. Her diary came alive. For years it had mostly contained despairing condemnations of her family members and dull recounting of her friendships’ vagaries, followed by general summations of how disappointing her life was as a whole, but something had happened now, and she felt the great expanse of the blank pages before her like a promise of all that would follow.

I was enamoured by Megan Nolan’s writing in 

 that I swore to myself to pick up anything that she puts out in the future. Although, 

 details a more rich and complex tale compared to her debut, Nolan’s ability to explore such human emotions and the complications that comes with comprehending the morals and values of life entangled with such a tragedy creates a new voice that is much more different and yet echoes of Nolan’s brilliant writing from her debut. Each of the characters’ story were so well fleshed out and the effects it had on my emotions were definitely surprising. The Greens were definitely an interesting family and it was a read unlike any other I have read by far. The mystery/crime aspect of it reminded me a tad of Agatha Christie’s works almost too. Overall, an interesting exploration into intergenerational trauma. Highly recommending this one to those who’d like something that is quite like a quiet suspense.

Allie

I was enamoured by Megan Nolan’s writing in Acts of Desperation that I swore to myself to pick up anything that she puts out in the future. Although, Ordinary Human Failings details a more rich and complex tale compared to her debut, Nolan’s ability to explore such human emotions and the complications that comes with comprehending the morals and values of life entangled with such a tragedy creates a new voice that is much more different and yet echoes of Nolan’s brilliant writing from her debut. Each of the characters’ story were so well fleshed out and the effects it had on my emotions were definitely surprising. The Greens were definitely an interesting family and it was a read unlike any other I have read by far. The mystery/crime aspect of it reminded me a tad of Agatha Christie’s works almost too. Overall, an interesting exploration into intergenerational trauma. Highly recommending this one to those who’d like something that is quite like a quiet suspense.

Ordinary Human Failings

Reviews

Highlights