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*LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024*
*SHORTLISTED FOR FICTION – 2023 NERO BOOK AWARDS*

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

‘Ambitious and original’ DAVID NICHOLLS

‘Gripping… A triumph’ SUNDAY TIMES

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

‘Daring, brilliant… Bold and beautiful’ DAILY TELEGRAPH

‘A compulsive read’ THE TIMES

‘Heartbreaking’ VOGUE

Publisher Review

Megan Nolan’s debut novel saw her grouped with other Irish millennial women such as Sally Rooney and Naoise Dolan. But with her ambitious and insightful second novel, Ordinary Human Failings, Nolan makes it clear she is not a manifestation of a type, but rather a writer to be read on her own terms * Financial Times * One masterful novel… Nolan has excelled herself: Ordinary Human Failings is a raw, pulsing thing… A writer who’s still at the start of what promises to be a splendid career. Ordinary Human Failings is a bold and beautiful second novel… daring in all the right ways, but compassionate when it needs to be * Daily Telegraph * There is something wonderfully ordinary about this book… Nolan has set out to make a plain three-legged stool rather than an ornate grandfather clock. The corridors of contemporary literature are stuffed with grandfather clocks with faulty mechanisms. How much more valuable is this modest, well-made thing * Sunday Times * As much of a compulsive read as the first novel * The Times * A subtle, accomplished and lyrical study of familial and intergenerational despair, a quiet book about quiet lives… An excellent novel: politically astute, furious and compassionate… A genuine achievement * Guardian *