Ordinary Human Failings

"Readers in the US will finally be able to get their hands on Ordinary Human Failings , the sophomore novel by the Irish writer Megan Nolan. It’s a change of direction after her transfixing debut Acts of Desperation — in which a troubled young woman sinks herself into a one-sided relationship—but not an unwelcome one. Ordinary Human Failings is a family drama set on a London housing estate in the 1990s, as the child of a Irish immigrant family falls under suspicion following the disappearance of a local toddler. An ambitious but jaded reporter offers to put the family up in a cheap hotel—for ‘protection’—but this apparent munificence comes with strings attached. Nolan has been one of my favourite writers for years; she dissects the inner experience with a scalpel blade and precisely labels what she finds. Ordinary Human Failings feels like a significant development in her personal style, shifting from the hushed confessional to something grander, something more universal. “Nolan dissects the inner experience with a scalpel blade and precisely labels what she finds” Past Five Books interviewee Francis Spufford ( Red Plenty , Golden Hill ) will also arrive Stateside with a new, propulsive novel that spans genre and literary fiction. Cahokia Jazz is billed as a “noirish detective novel” set in an alternate 1920s America, where the Jazz Age is swinging in the grand old Mississippian city of Cahokia . In our own reality, Cahokia was an ancient indigenous settlement abandoned in the 14th century; in Cahokia Jazz, thanks to a quirk of epidemiological history, the city not only survived but thrived and now acts as the setting of a complex murder mystery set in train by the discovery of a “spectacularly butchered” body on the roof of a skyscraper. It’s been out since October this side of the Atlantic, garnering rave reviews; it will be interesting to see what Americans think of their reminagined nation."