Ordinary Human Failings

By Megan Nolan

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316567787
• ISBN13: 9780316567787
• Release Date: February 2024
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A well-versed storyline without a plot

I was pulled into the writers prose within the first couple chapters and couldn’t put this book down- and at the end I was left thinking, there really wasn’t much plot, and yet so much was developed and told. I don’t know how else to describe it. Normally I like psychological thrillers, but this was an enjoyable break, getting to know complex characters that you needn’t know any further by the end of the book.