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Ordinary Human Failings

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Ordinary Human Failings

By: Megan Nolan
Narrated by: Jessica Regan
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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  
I struggled to get into this one initially but went back to it and I’m glad I did. Very much in the theme of Ordinary People but with less sex and more emotional pain! Ritchies errors were so well written I could barely listen to it all unfold and felt all of his anguish. Highly recommend for those who love an in-depth account of the human condition.

Ordinary People with more emotional trauma

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As the title suggests this book is about ordinary human failings, and it does a good job of capturing that sentiment but my god it was a pretty grim listen.

Depressing and ordinary

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