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adam_mcphee 's review for:
Ordinary Human Failings
by Megan Nolan
I enjoyed this. It's well written and I loved the deep dives into the family's background, but it's such a weird structure. I don't even mean that in a negative way, really. There's a crime, and then a tabloid journalist sequesters the family in a hotel to try and get something lurid out of them. He's hoping for incest, domestic violence, anything scandalous that will move papers. But theirs are--wait for it--ordinary human failings. He doesn't even seem really to get them to talk. My impression is that the recollections mostly happen internally, with very little being shared out loud. Something only a novel could do. The crime that happens is tragic but not implausible (child dies while playing with friends) and so is the aftermath (another child wrongly accused and taken from family). The author just seems to use these events to launch into the family's past, which is compelling in its own right but not as immediate as a possible murder. And yet it's the family's past that's ultimately more interesting. In a way the death isn't necessary at all. What could have been (and still partly is) an examination of the sleazy side of 'true crime' and British tabloid culture instead becomes a compelling examination of a family. Weird but definitely not bad, I enjoyed every page of this short novel and will check out the author's previous novel at some point too.