Ordinary Human Failings - Megan Nolan
London 1990 and a young reporter called Tom is on the trail of an emotive and shocking story - a young child has been found dead on a housing estate. Attention has turned to the Green family - Irish immigrants who keep themselves to themselves but have always seemed a bit odd. Suspicion in particular falls on Lucy, seen playing with young Mia before she disappeared.
I’m sure I’m not alone in being slightly anxious that the story was going to be taken up with the death of a young child, but the story doesn’t go down that road. Rather, it’s a book about the secrets that people carry around with them, the private suffering hidden just below the surface.
Carmel
Carmel is very much at the centre of the book, mother of Lucy and the reason why the family moved from Waterford to London in the first place. Richie is her half brother, who struggles with drink and finding a direction in life. Her father is John, distant and troubled by events in his own past. Mother Rose is the glue holding the family together.
Alongside the events in London, as the investigation continues, we learn about the lives of each of the characters in Waterford before they moved to London. This is skilfully done, shedding light on where we find them in the book.
Richie
There’s a scene in the book where Richie goes on the drink, and you can see exactly what’s going to happen. It’s a bit of a minor heartbreak that you know decides the direction that lives can take. It’s a perfectly described scene that had me feeling the fear even before Richie did.
‘A feeling of contentment and buoyancy came over him and he felt proud of himself for not having a drink, and this clean good feeling made him want a drink’.
Unhappy
It’s often quoted, but Tolstoys ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’ really resonates in this book. And as Carmel says to Tom at one stage
‘The secret is we’re a family, we’re just an ordinary family, with ordinary unhappiness like yours…..there is no secret Tom, or else there are hundreds of them, and none of them interesting enough for you.’
It’s also a book about the absence of affection, and how that can mark you. It’s also about emigration and loneliness, about some of the issues facing women in Ireland.
There’s so much accurate in this book, that really resonated with me, and I don’t think it’s just particular to Irish families. One of the characters talks about not rushing from the table after dinner, but staying to talk, exchange morsels of information about the day gone. Simply acknowledging each other.
Change
One of the things I really liked about this book is that you really feel that some of the characters change. It’s fine for an author to say that a character has developed, but I really felt that Carmel reached an understanding, that there was a growth from her experiences. It felt both natural and satisfying. In the same vein, another of the characters didn’t, and disappeared into his own personal, comfortable sadness, and that felt genuine too.
For that reason I found it a bittersweet ending, some of the characters growing in awareness, even if it was caused by ‘the extreme pressure of crisis’, but there is also the realisation that ‘the things you did or failed to do could not be erased by anything, not even love’. I would say that though I felt for the characters on occasions, they didn't quite click with me; I was never fully engaged with them, except for Carmel who I did feel for.
Ordinary Human Failings Summary
I found this to be a superbly written book, and found myself rereading many of the passages. It has a great pace to it, and I often found myself slowing down to enjoy it that bit more. The writing has such a natural flow, the language precise and succinct. I had of course see many of the plaudits for Megan’s previous book ‘Acts of desperation’, which I admit to having bought back in 2021, but it got lost in my glut of amazon downloads. It’s something that I’ll be putting right soon, having been really impressed with this, her second book.
Thanks to Random House Vintage and Netgalley for the Advanced Reader Copy.
To be published on July 23, 2023
224 pages
Preorder - Penguin