Megan Nolan

Reading this book was akin to sitting in on a psychotic’s free association therapy session. I found it disjointed and rambling. Although some of the unnamed main character’s insights into her motivations and psyche seem as though she should learn from them, she never seems to be able to apply the knowledge and goes on to repeat ad-nausea the exact same or highly similar self-destructive behaviors. I felt like I was being dragged through a murky, sludgy sea of depravity and self-loathing show more by her for the entirety of the book. It was annoying at best. I would have not finished it but for the fact that I won it in a Goodreads giveaway and feel responsible for providing an honest review. show less

When a small child goes missing on a London housing estate, Tom, an ambitious young reporter with a tabloid, goes to gather information. Chances all, the tot will be found and it will all be a waste of time. He chats with the residents, who tell him about the problem family. So when the child is found dead and the daughter of that family is taken in for questioning, he's in the right place to get the family out of the estate and sequestered in a small hotel, where he can get his first big show more story. But as the drinks flow and Tom asks his questions, the stories he hears are not the ones he needs to get a scoop.

This novel follows the lives of the members of a small Irish family. They are not liked by their neighbors, and there are reasons for that, not the least of these being that once the girl's grandmother had died, there was no one to care about what she did, her mother intent on escaping the dead end that became of her once bright future, her uncle intent on drinking himself to death and her grandfather, sitting passively. Megan Nolan, who wrote the excellent Acts of Desperation, knows how to write with enormous empathy about people on the edge of society and here she has created a moving and thought-provoking novel. show less

It feels as though there are a lot of novels being published currently by young Irish women writing about relationships. And, honestly, I've liked one of the three I've read so far. Yet, here I am, picking up another one, like that rat in the cage, pushing on the bar, hoping for a treat.

This is a novel about an Irish woman's volatile relationship. The novel's narrator is desperately insecure and wants nothing more than to fall in love, so when she meets Ciaran, she is ready to submerge her show more life into his. And, for awhile, this seems to work. But Ciaran disapproves of much of what she does and becomes cold at the slightest infraction. His coldness just pushes her into trying harder to be the perfect girlfriend, even as he becomes more exacting and even when he makes it clear that he's still emotionally involved with his last girlfriend.

The first part of the novel reads like many other stories about a young woman and how she becomes trapped in an abusive relationship with a manipulative man. But as the novel progresses, Nolan complicates the story in ways that reflect real life. This was a far more interesting novel than it initially seemed and I'm looking forward to what this author writes next. Definitely stay far away from Ciaran, though. show less

The secret is that we’re a family, we’re just an ordinary family, with ordinary unhappiness like yours.

from Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan
Tom Hargreaves was a reporter who preyed human failings, spinning compulsive news stories for a tabloid magazine. He was onto the perfect story: a ten-year-old girl implicated in the death of a child. Her family had come from Ireland to London, the father and brother deadbeat alcoholics and the mother beautiful and depressed. Tom uses his honed show more skills to worm his way into their lives, his sympathetic appearance masking a heartless and analytical intention to spin their story into an explosive headline that would make his career.

The Green family is knit together by blood but not intimacy. Each is trapped in their own misery, like distant planets encased in icy tombs. Left out is the child who since the death of her grandmother has not been cherished or loved or touched. When she is taken by the police, her first thought was that finally, her inner evil has been discovered.

The novel takes us inside these ordinary people with their ordinary tragedies. A teenage girl deceived into intimacy, denying her pregnancy, shutting out the child, her dreams of being special gone. The father whose beloved wife cheats on him and leaves him, his second wife struggling to care for his broken family. The son who was never cherished, his desire to be liked leading to his hanging with drinking buddies at the bar and subsequent alcoholism. And the granddaughter, confused and angry and alone.

Yes, it is dark. The author takes us into these character’s thoughts, a sad place to be. But then she offers hope and healing and growth. We don’t have to be speechless and alone, they learn. “The trying would be their life’s work,” they come to understand, the trying to connect, to be open, to care, to love.

The novel left me thinking–What if. What if society could identify needs and provide therapy to heal ordinary human failings, the hurt and pain that builds defences and the anger that lashes out, too often leading to wasted lives or violence inflicted on oneself or others?

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley. show less