When a young girl dies while playing with other children in a London estate, suspicion is cast on a ten-year-old girl from a reclusive Irish family — the Greens. The scandal offers unparalleled potential to grip the public’s attention and be the story of the year. This fact is not lost on tabloid reporter Tom Hargreaves, who quickly shepherds the Green family to a hotel paid for by his paper. He pitches it as a benevolent act to protect their privacy, but really aims to protect his scoop.
Against this backdrop, the writer gives us a glimpse into the lives of the green family — the self-sacrificing matriarch of the family (who not surprisingly dies first), the aloof patriarch, the alcoholic son whose longings for fatherly connection go unmet (much to his detriment), and the daughter whose great potential is thwarted by an early, unexpected pregnancy. Then there is the granddaughter, a reportedly weird child who may very well have committed the murder she is suspected of.
On the surface, the story appears to be a thriller about a sordid murder, but really it is about intergenerational trauma.
About lives that never quite came to fruition due to some derailment or other— an unwanted pregnancy, an emotionally remote parent, an unfortunate vulnerability to alcohol passed down through generations — and the subsequent existence coloured by bitterness and regret.
I particularly appreciated how the writer presents each character’s life story, the obscure experiences that inform the decisions that ultimately shape them, including the political landscapes and societal expectations of their outer world. In some sad way, the story is also about the muted despair of such people, their struggle against their circumstances. In many ways they’re like a fly caught in a spider web. Trapped, frantic and futilely exhausting themselves against a plaster of fate that has set.
Most if it goes unseen. People are content to look away from their suffering until some awful thing happens. Just when their lives have been upended, now they must be probed. They lose all privacy as people look for signs and reasons to blame them, some dark, sordid detail that unravels the mystery of why a ten-year-old child from that family might be capable of murder. In that way the story then becomes about dignity, privacy and how much of both people deserve when a tragedy of seemingly their own making befalls them.
There are different layers and dimensions to each character’s arc, but the title sums it up astutely. This is a story about ordinary human failings, not just those of the Greens but also those of morality based on the conceited judgement of others, a culture where lurid tabloidism thrives, and the casual detachment of society that enables this.
Megan Nolan has a fantastic way of capturing unspeakable moments. I equal parts enjoy and envy this quality in any piece of writing, so this was a five star read for me. Highly recommend.
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