As ghastly as the death of a toddler at the hands of another child may be, the real horror here is how a family once marked by “only average unhappiness” has descended into an existence of true loneliness and pain. Ordinary Human Failings is a mature and considered sophomore novel, brimming with the same rich and insightful language as Nolan's debut. A feminist retelling of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, as seen from the perspective of Winston Smith’s lover Julia. The Greens are seen as outsiders, with Carmel, Richie, John and Carmel’s daughter Lucy all being marked for their unusual quirks of alcoholism and denialism. But Sittenfeld is so witty – her prose is full to the gunnels of pithy one-liners – and quite simply a masterful storyteller, so any preconceptions we had turned out to be totally misguided.

Carmel is very much at the centre of the book, mother of Lucy and the reason why the family moved from Waterford to London in the first place. A chance run-in with Lucy’s father, whom Carmel had been too proud to tell she was expecting, shows the gargantuan gap in the impact of the affair on each of their lives. Franklin-Wallis, features editor at British GQ, travels to landfills in Ghana, incinerators in Oklahoma and sewers in Britain to expose a sprawling global system in crisis. Like Eliza Clark’s recent novel, Penance, Ordinary Human Failings explores the effects of class on the justice system, and one’s chances in life more broadly, as the Greens face the fallout of a legacy of neglect.

Two exes on a road trip through troubled America open “a trapdoor in reality” in a tragicomic novel about past and present. In my experience authors tend to dislike questions about their fiction novels where the interviewer asks how much is autobiographical. There’s John, another alcoholic, the father of the family, prone to intermittent bouts of rage, perhaps understandable given his life-changing injuries after an accident at work and the humiliating end of his first marriage.

A new author takes over Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, as the story moves to the stark expanses of northern Sweden. I don’t want to spoil the novel but I will say the length given to each character makes the novel feel a little bit flat in terms of plot suspension. I think this novel will divide people in terms of how Nolan places specific focus on the characters’ lives rather than the event in question. 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.Gibson, writing 30 years on and under a pseudonym, shares the story of his relationship with a teacher twice his age at a major UK private school.