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

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Novelist and poet Fagan writes powerfully about her childhood as a ward of the state, a rootless existence that fostered a fascination with storytelling. the fear of ever being a burden on others and the dread of nobody ever paying attention to him” (125) Broadcast last year on his podcast, Ellis’s first novel in 13 years melds autobiography and fiction to focus on a group of privileged LA students at risk from a serial killer. YA debut about social media, internet fame and cancel culture, with a heroine whose parents have put her whole life online. The artist behind the Battle of Orgreave and Sacrilege (an inflatable version of Stonehenge) explores the people, places and cultural artefacts that have inspired his work.

When a reporter, Tom Hargreaves, with a fierce ambition and a brisk disregard for the ‘peasants’ – ordinary people, his readers – stumbles across this 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’, he persuades his paper to put them up in a hotel with all bar expenses paid.When a young girl in a London council estate dies, rumors start to fly about the Green family. After all, the girl was last seen playing with their daughter Lucy. And hasn’t Lucy always been a bit odd? Her mother Carmel is never around, her Uncle Richie a barely functioning alcoholic, and the Grandad John is reclusive and detached.

The synopsis of Ordinary Human Failings reads: “It’s 1990 in London and Carmel’s daughter is suspected of murdering another child. Carmel is beautiful, otherworldly, broken, and was 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. By 2020 I had sold my novel and had the means to support myself and rent an apartment without constant worry, which was just as well as I’m not sure how I would have continued my previous cat-sitting, subletting way of life during the pandemic. I was certainly less than stoic in the face of isolation, but I embraced obligatory domesticity as best I could. After all, I had longed for it. I had wanted the burden of objects, of actually owning a bed, a decent wok and a television. And so I nested. Eventually, I got a cat. I didn’t feel happy but I felt something like contentment, and decided that this amounted to the same thing. 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. A fresh perspective on the great writer through the lens of her relationship with (already married) George Lewes, which she called “this double life, which helps me to feel and think with double strength”.The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens Our Businesses, Infantilizes Our Governments and Warps Our Economies by Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington, Allen Lane Ordinary Human Failings is a mature and considered sophomore novel, brimming with the same rich and insightful language as Nolan's debut. While Acts of Desperation felt quite interior (which I loved), this book really broadens its perspective, focusing on a number of well-realised characters. The event that sets in motion Megan Nolan’s second novel is a chilling one – the murder of a minor, seemingly at the hands of another child. Ordinary Human Failings, predominantly set in early-90s London, opens with a frantic investigation to uncover what happened to three-year-old Mia Enright. Her crumpled, bruised body is found by a rubbish chute in the Nunhead council estate where she lived. Neighbours say they last saw her playing with Lucy Green, the unpredictable 10-year-old daughter of an Irish family that has long been the source of xenophobic suspicion amongst the residents of Skyler Square. Devoured it in 2 days. Compulsively readable. I loved Carmel and Richie’s stories set in Waterford. She’s so good at capturing the little crazy details of people, I could relate to Tom always imagining the most inappropriate actions he could take at any one time, including having to restrain himself at the yearly pantomime as he pictured himself running on stage sand stripping naked. My only criticism was it tied a little too neatly at the end. I also think the incorporation of the title ‘ordinary human failings’ into the text was a bit much.