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Megan Nolan

Auteur van Acts of Desperation

2 Werken 272 Leden 10 Besprekingen

Werken van Megan Nolan

Acts of Desperation (2021) 218 exemplaren
Ordinary Human Failings (2023) 54 exemplaren

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Set mostly in the early 1990's, this is a book about the ways in which ordinary families find themselves on benefits and sinking fast in their emotional and social lives until a shocking event shakes them up and forces them to talk about their feelings and how they want their future to be.

An Irish family, the Greens, move to an estate in London to escape social judgements about a pregnancy and provide a new start for an alcoholic. Pregnant Carmel refuses to engage with her pregnancy or child and so Rose, her mother, takes over until she dies. And then the child, Lucy, is left in the hands of people who are incapable of looking after her. It is at this time that Mia,a young child also from the estate, is killed and the last person she was seen with was Lucy.

What frames this story is the involvement of a journalist from a tabloid newspaper who whisks the family away to a hotel and puts them up there to keep them away from other newspapers but also so that he has ample time to interview them, dig into their lives, and find out all their secrets. Whilst this family is vulnerable, they are not gullible and in their own ways fight back. We get flashbacks to Waterford in Ireland where we see their backstories and why they are like they are.

The story is not as black and white as this description may make it seem. Tom, the journalist, is troubled by what he is doing and suffers for it. He still manages to think only of the great story he can uncover, with his motivation being told he has done well by the editor. Always a dangerous motivation pleasing others. Nolan also describes the alcoholism very well - the on and off drinking, the 'I will only drink such and such a drink', the gradual sinking down until you are drinking non-stop and lost to those who love you. It's quite heartbreaking.

If you had to connect a weather to this book it would be a grey, cloudy day where the clouds go from white to black and every shade inbetween. It is only at the very end that you see a few beams of light pierce the overcastness wrapped around the family because how do you undo years of neglect that a child has experienced, especially a child in Lucy's position?

There is no great big, dirty secret to reveal about this family, just lots of small ones that are quite ordinary but accumulate and trap the inhabitants, passed on from one generation to the next. And so the newspaper pulls the story and Tom is left with nothing other than a little more loathing for himself.

The end of the book shows the family a few years later but we don't get to hear about Tom and I would have liked to know how someone of those times who was unable to see past his own experiences faired. Did he succeed in tabloid journalism or did it drive him to alcohol?

A really interesting look at a time in our not-too-distant past which is being played out in courtrooms at present. What lengths would tabloids go to in order to get a story?
… (meer)
½
 
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allthegoodbooks | 1 andere bespreking | Jan 2, 2024 |
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 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.
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
nancyadair | 1 andere bespreking | Dec 12, 2023 |
Couldn’t ever get into it. First half promising, utthe series of sex scenes became boring.
 
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kjuliff | 7 andere besprekingen | Aug 1, 2023 |

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Statistieken

Werken
2
Leden
272
Populariteit
#85,118
Waardering
½ 3.4
Besprekingen
10
ISBNs
21
Talen
3

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