About the Author

Megan Nolan was born in 1990 in Waterford, Ireland and is currently based in New York. Her essays and reviews have been published by the New York Times, White Review, Guardian and Frieze amongst others. For her debut novel, Acts of Desperation, Nolan was the recipient of a Betty Trask Award, shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Ordinary Human Failings was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, and shortlisted for the Nero Book Award for Fiction, the Gordon Burn Prize and the RSL Encore Award.

Reviews

Megan Nolan's debut novel saw her grouped with other Irish millennial women such as Sally Rooney and Naoise Dolan. But with her ambitious and insightful second novel, Ordinary Human Failings, Nolan makes it clear she is not a manifestation of a type, but rather a writer to be read on her own terms
*Financial Times*

One masterful novel... Nolan has excelled herself: Ordinary Human Failings is a raw, pulsing thing... A writer who's still at the start of what promises to be a splendid career. Ordinary Human Failings is a bold and beautiful second novel... daring in all the right ways, but compassionate when it needs to be
*Daily Telegraph*

There is something wonderfully ordinary about this book... Nolan has set out to make a plain three-legged stool rather than an ornate grandfather clock. The corridors of contemporary literature are stuffed with grandfather clocks with faulty mechanisms. How much more valuable is this modest, well-made thing
*Sunday Times*

Nolan’s novel is dark in subject, yet retains a tender faith in a person’s, or a family’s, capacity for change
*New Statesman, *Books of the Year**

Ambitious and original… I loved its humanity and generosity… I can’t wait to read whatever comes next
*DAVID NICHOLLS, author of One Day and You Are Here*

Tightly written, full of wisdom, insight and sympathy – terrific!
*CLARE CHAMBERS, author of Small Pleasures*

As much of a compulsive read as the first novel
*The Times*

A subtle, accomplished and lyrical study of familial and intergenerational despair, a quiet book about quiet lives... An excellent novel: politically astute, furious and compassionate... A genuine achievement
*Guardian*

The millennial author everyone should be watching right now
*Daily Telegraph*

Nolan has crafted a novel full of brutal, illuminating truths
*Sunday Times, *Books of the Year**