Recommendations from our site
“Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan is a novel that handles trauma with honesty and care. There is no sugar-coating with virtue or easy beauty here. This is a story that employs a cleanly cinematic gaze to observe the plain disintegration of a family through a pattern of social circumstance, addiction and prejudice, egged on by the ruthlessness of 90s tabloid journalism – to give us a portrayal of a society both fractured and hopeful” Read more...
The Best Political Novels of 2024: The Orwell Prize for Fiction
“Ordinary Human Failings is a family drama set on a London housing estate in the 1990s, as an Irish immigrant family falls under suspicion following the disappearance of a local toddler. An ambitious but jaded reporter offers to put the family up in a cheap hotel—for ‘protection’—but this apparent munificence comes with strings attached. Nolan has been one of my favourite writers for years; she dissects and labels emotion and the inner experience with a scalpel blade. Ordinary Human Failings feels like a significant development in her personal style, shifting from the hushed confessional to something grander, something more universal.” Read more...
Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor
Other books by Megan Nolan
Our most recommended books
-
Le théâtre des idées
by Antoine Vitez -
End to End
by Paul Jones -
Desire Discrimination Determination: Black Champions in Cycling
by Marlon Moncrieffe -
Higher Calling: Road Cycling’s Obsession with the Mountains
by Max Leonard -
What Goes Around: A London Cycle Courier's Story
by Emily Chappell -
The Rider
by Tim Krabbé
