Ordinary Human Failings

London in the nineties- a tabloid journalist begins to probe long-held secrets of an Irish family implicated in a shocking crime

A Best Book of 2023 in The Times, Sunday Times, i-D, the Guardian

When we look beyond the headlines, everyone has a story to tell

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, otherworldly, 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.