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Acts of Desperation

The must-read novel

Please believe the hype . . . Nolan's book describes a very particular experience and it does so with rare intelligence and courage . . . [Her] headlong, fearless prose feels like salt wind on cracked lips. You wince and you thrill.

Deeply felt and seriously, spikily intelligent . . . The millennial author everyone should be watching right now.

Tapping into the zeitgeist comes one of the books of 2021: Megan Nolan's Acts of Desperation . . . a heartbreaking-but-resonating portrait of one woman's savage mistreatment of herself in the name of love.

There is so much to admire in this extremely impressive first novel, which captures an intense experience with clarity and style. It is fully itself, and flawless in its way.

[A] fearless debut . . . Amusing, relatable, crushing . . . Nolan's gutsiest achievement is reclaiming the female experience of love and desire in all its shades from lighter literature, making of it something frequently unpretty yet intensely vital.

Oh my god! Such brilliant writing about female desire, co-dependant love, the ownership that's taken of female bodies and how it corrupts our relationship to them. I identified hugely. Incredibly honest and visceral.

It's impossible to tear yourself away . . . This is more than simple victimhood. This is a hard frank look at something uglier and more discomforting . . . I couldn't stop reading Acts of Desperation.

A mesmerising debut that is a masterpiece from the opening sentence to the bitter end, and everything in between.

Independent *5 new books to read in lockdown*

I loved this book . . . It triumphs because it takes a risk . . . We find ourselves hurtling towards an ending that is surprising, satisfying, subversive . . . Deeply affecting.

Nolan's raw and uncannily insightful writing glimmers in a way that will shed new light onto wounds both healed and open

Acts of Desperation . . . ruthlessly peels back the ego to expose the soul's most discomfiting corners . . . [and] illuminates the fragile tension between power and desire.

Nolan's writing gleams with dark precision . . . What Acts of Desperation illuminates best is the chasm, sadly still enormous, between feminist politics and personal predicaments of love, sex and romance.

Megan Nolan is a huge literary talent, and her first novel is a love story like no other.

This is an incredible debut . . . Poignant, poetic, raw and utterly unique - I couldn't stop reading. Pre-order it now.

Remarkable . . . a stunning meditation on the ways in which society moulds female desire . . . Lyrical and raw, Acts of Desperation is a vital intervention into the genre.

Nolan's ability to illustrate the rawest thoughts, neurosis and murky emotions is unrivalled. It's a read that will get inside your core.

One of the most anticipated books of the year . . . Lives up to the hype.

AnOther Magazine *The Literary Fiction to Look Out for in 2021*

A darkly rich and heady exploration of hunger and unraveling, Acts of Desperation is unashamed and honest. It questions the truest way to inhabit a body and shows us the horror and the beauty in learning to be alone.

A gripping story of romance gone wrong . . . It delves deep into the subtle psychology behind the temptation to return to something you know is not right for you.

Is Acts of Desperation the next Normal People? An 'exhilarating' debut from a young Irish author . . . interrogates what it means to be a woman addicted to love.

[A] gripping debut novel... The writing is fearless and gut punching... Love, pain and pleasure are so closely entwined that it's almost impossible to extrapolate which one is feeding the other.

Nolan's narrator rips and picks at the threads and scabs of desire, hedonism and self-worth... in this searing first novel, Nolan is holding up a fantastically intense mirror to her protagonist and letting us make up our own mind about whether or not we will look away.

There are flashes of brilliance throughout, reminiscent of John Berger.

Acts of Desperation creates an immersive experience of toxic romance through a suffocating and addictive narrative.

A reflection on compulsion, addiction and what it's like to exist as a young woman in a world that is hostile to you. Read the first page and you won't be able to stop.

Nolan...stakes out thrilling new territory in an intense, unflinching novel that is always intelligent and utterly unafraid of ugliness.

A devastating stripping back of the gendered and politicised conditions that shape desire, a revelation of the unnerving ways we are made vulnerable to others in unequal systems. Its crisp, knowing prose is unparalleled, its anger remarkable.

Nolan's intelligent, elegant first novel, a gripping portrait of love turned toxic.

The star feature of Nolan's narration is her ability to cut through received ideas about women, relationships and even rape. Her headlong, fearless prose, feels like salt wind on cracked lips. You wince and you thrill.

A raw read of vulnerability, desperation, and most definitely a new voice in fiction

A thrilling read...if you want a visceral, honest, unputdownable summer read then this is it. You'll devour it in a day.

A very elegant novel, with coercive control at the core. She has such a strong voice and not a sentence is extraneous

I read this in one go... I found it raw, honest, brutal and real.

Written with acerbic style and wit, this is an intoxicatingly good look at romantic obsession, delusion and desire.

Beautifully written…and the short chapters keep things moving at an addictively fast pace. Most importantly, it’s shamelessly real

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.

Megan Nolan

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

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

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

Nolan’s novel is dark in subject, yet retains a tender faith in a person’s, or a family’s, capacity for change

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

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

The millennial author everyone should be watching right now

Nolan has crafted a novel full of brutal, illuminating truths

Megan Nolan is one of the brightest young things around

Addiction, teenage pregnancy and heartbreak fuel this pacey, poignant novel

A feat of narrative compression that showcases Nolan's talent

An ambitious novel, and the story is told beautifully

Heartbreaking, society-examining stuff

A brilliant analysis of what happens when we treat horror and pain as entertainment. Nolan writes with great compassion

Nicole Flattery, author of Nothing Special

Page-turning and written with aching, compassionate insight. Each account leaves your heartstrings taut as cheese wire

A heartbreaking study in how humiliation and grief are passed from parent to child

Nolan's prose is cool, elegant and, at times, stunningly beautiful

The final pages...moved me to tears. This is a fine novel by an author who, at just thirty-three, already has exceptional skill and nerve

Ordinary Human Failings is something as rare as a chilling, ice cold, bruising novel not shying from the darkest aspects of humanity, at the same time as being compassionate, aching and ultimately hopeful. I inhaled it, and its characters will stay with me for a long long time. Oh she sure can write that Nolan

A fearless writer... Marks a confident evolution in her writing

The narrative never lets up, with brilliantly conceived and achieved set-pieces

London School of Economics, *Books of the Year*

Nolan switches deftly between perspectives in this sometimes nasty but compassionate novel

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE NERO BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION 2023 
FINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION 2024 
 
After the death of a young girl, the finger of suspicion is pointing at one reclusive family… 
 
‘Ambitious and original’ DAVID NICHOLLS 
 
‘Gripping… A triumph’ SUNDAY TIMES 
 
It’s 1990 in London and, after the death of a young girl on an estate, the finger of suspicion is pointing at one reclusive Irish family: the Greens. 
 
At their heart sits Carmel: beautiful, other-worldly, and once destined for a future beyond her circumstances until life – and love – got in her way. Now, as the scandal unfolds and the tabloids hunt their monster, she must confront the secrets and silences that have trapped her family for so many generations. 
 
***A DAILY TELEGRAPH, TIMES, NEW STATESMAN AND SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR*** 
 
‘Daring, brilliant… Bold and beautiful’ DAILY TELEGRAPH 
 
‘A compulsive read’ THE TIMES 
 
‘Heartbreaking’ VOGUE

Megan Nolan

Books by Megan Nolan

Articles featuring Megan Nolan

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Megan Nolan: the books that shaped my life

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