If You Should Fail: Why Success Eludes Us and Why It Doesn't Matter

Joe Moran's book "If You Should Fail" offers wise insight and honesty, helping us accept and live with life's blows rather than be diminished or wounded by them. It explores how modern life makes us feel like failures, frauds, and imposters, and how failure is an occupational hazard of being human. Moran's upbeat reflections on being human and his critique of how we live now offer comfort, hope, and solace, reminding us that not every failure can be made into a success.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 176 pages
Publication date: 05 August 2021
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

There is an honesty and a clarity in Joe Moran's book "If You Should Fail" that normalises and softens the usual blows of life that enables us to accept and live with them rather than be diminished/wounded by them. Julia Samuel, author of "Grief Works" and "This Too Shall Pass" says, "Full of wise insight and honesty. Moran manages to be funny, erudite, and kindly: a rare and compelling combination. This is the essential antidote to a culture obsessed with success."

Madeleine Bunting writes, "Failure is the small print in life's terms and conditions. Covering everything from examination dreams to fourth-placed Olympians, "If You Should Fail" is about how modern life, in a world of self-advertised success, makes us feel like failures, frauds, and imposters. Widely acclaimed observer of daily life Joe Moran is here not to tell you that everything will be all right in the end, but to reassure you that failure is an occupational hazard of being human. As Moran shows, even the supremely gifted Leonardo da Vinci could be seen as a failure. Most artists, writers, sports stars, and business people face failure. We all will, and can learn how to live with it.

To echo Virginia Woolf, beauty is only got by the failure to get it. . . . by facing what must be humiliation - the things one can't do. Combining philosophy, psychology, history, and literature, Moran's ultimately upbeat reflections on being human, and his critique of how we live now, offers comfort, hope, and solace. For we need to see that not every failure can be made into a success - and that's OK.

Weight: 132g
Dimension: 128 x 197 x 14 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780241988107