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Ordinary Human Failings

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024.

A Highly Anticipated Novel of 2023 in The Times, i-D, Esquire and the Guardian.

When we look beyond the headlines, everyone has a story to tell

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.

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.

©2023 Megan Nolan (P)2023 Penguin Audio Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Heartfelt England

Critic reviews

A brilliant analysis of what happens when we treat horror and pain as entertainment. Nolan writes with great compassion (Nicole Flattery, author of Nothing Special)
All stars
Most relevant
Such a wonderful book. Megan Nolan is an amazing writer. I loved it and will think about it for a long time.

Fantastic writing!

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I’ve just finished an feel a little too emotional to leave a coherent review. But……WOW! Absolutely tragic, yet out of this story of such sadness comes beautiful hope. I really want there to be a sequel where everyone lives happily ever after!

A harrowing but astonishing listen

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It’s not a cheerful book, but I’m always interested in reading books with flawed characters.
Well written and narrated

Sad but insightful and hopeful

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Disappointing. I persevered, but a poor conclusion to the story,
Far too much hot air.

Disappointing

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This author writes characters with such depth and such love that they lodge deep in your heart, familiar and strange at the same time. She portrays the grip of alcoholism like no other too. Grateful to be alive at the same time as Meg Nolan.

I loved this book

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