Scala Radio Book Club: Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan
When we look beyond the headlines, everyone has a story to tell
On Thursday the 13th of July, Penny Smith welcomed best-selling author Megan Nolan into the Scala Radio Book Club to discuss her latest searing novel Ordinary Human Failings which follows a reporter who begins to investigate an Irish family implicated in an atrocious crime.
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, other-worldly, 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.
Penny Smith opened her interview by asking Megan Nolan about her latest novel: ‘Tell us about the book, it centres on an Irish family who go to live in South London?
‘Yes. This is the Greens, and the story was conceived, not really to do with the crime, but more so about this family, and the crime became the way to tell their story, because of this pressured environment they're brought into. It was always conceived of as a way to give a portrait of this family.’
Penny Smith was curious about Megan Nolan’s inspiration for her book: ‘Did you have an initial idea for the book? Did it come from one particular thing?’
‘I was struck by an anecdote in a Gordon Burn book called: “Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son”, which is about Peter Sutcliffe. It’s a really gruelling, horrible book, but brilliant. And there's a very brief anecdote in that about a tabloid journalist approaching Sutcliffe’s family, some of whom were working-class alcoholics and offering them booze and money in order to be their source on tap. So I thought that was a very interesting idea, this pressure cooker environment for this family to be in.’
Penny Smith quizzed Megan Nolan on her musical background: ‘Do you play any musical instruments?’
‘No. I sing and I love to sing, and I was in choirs my whole life really and I was in a band when I was 17. But no, I don’t have the discipline to learn instruments. Once I left my teenage years, it's not so easy to be involved with those things. And then a couple of years into my twenties, I realized I really physically missed singing and the way singing makes you physically feel. So, I'm trying to make sure I do it, even if it's just in a shower. I find it to be very important to my body to do it
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