Brought to you by Penguin.

Hello and welcome to the Penguin podcast where we talk to writers about writing.

I'm Izzy Souty and today I'm going to be talking to

Megan Nolan, the best-selling author and essayist, whose first novel, Acts of Desperation, received a Betty Trask Award.

Megan's latest novel, Ordinary Human Failings, is a novel that explores the complex and nuanced lives

of people brought together by a shocking

crime.

Megan, welcome to the Penguin Podcast.

Thank you so much.

The book starts with the murder of a young girl, Mia, and an older girl from the same estate,

Lucy Green, is immediately implicated as the perpetrator.

And then the book delves into the lives of Lucy's Irish family via the frankly delicious

character of a journalist called Tom.

And he's a bit of a weird character to have as a favourite character because he's so morally bankrupt.

But I absolutely loved him.

And he sees his readers as peasants.

And he takes the family to a hotel when Lucy's arrested.

And he plies them with booze for information that he can print. I don't know why I loved him so much because I know he's,

he knows he's such a horrible person but he's so unwittingly comic. I love the bit where his

mum gives him money to buy two suits for his new job and he buys a mossy green one and gets mistaken

from a member of the Green Party. And I think my favourite line is where he scrunches his mouth

up to the side in a little anus of concern. It's absolutely fantastic. Did you enjoy writing

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