Banal Nightmare

Reviews

“Halle Butler has crafted a novel in which every character proves to be completely, uniquely crazy. Her perverse sense of humor should be studied and celebrated.”—David Sedaris

“Halle Butler’s Banal Nightmare will end summer with a bang. It’s about turning thirty-seven and realizing you hate everybody you know. It’s also about trying to become an adult while living in—and through—this unregulated, neoliberal, late-capitalist version of the internet with which we are presently saddled. . . . So funny, so smart, utterly vicious—just brilliant.”—Zadie Smith

“In Butler’s latest novel, Banal Nightmare, about a bunch of self-described creatives muddling through the Midwest, she spares no one. . . . They are all unhappy and unfulfilled and put one another through huge amounts of psychic torture in the name of nothing at all. It’s very funny. . . . Butler’s real skill isn’t merely skewing these people . . . Her talent lies in depicting how these sore winners think, and the quiet madness that comes from measuring every interaction in your life by what might be gained in power and status.”—The New York Review of Books

“With the force of an episode of marijuana psychosis and the extreme detail of a hyperrealistic work of art, Banal Nightmare attempts transcendence through anxiety and dissociation, nailing a series of contemporary characters—better pray you’re not one of them—to the wall.”—Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror

“This is a masterpiece, Butler’s best book yet. It burns with a wild, unforgiving fire, making most other novels seem vague and ho-hum in comparison. No feeling is skipped over. No thought is simplified. No idea is dumbed down. Like a knife dancing through air, it’s a manic, nerve-wracking read, painful and so weirdly funny. I felt gripped by it from beginning to end. . . . An unapologetic, totally original, modern marvel.”—Rachel B. Glaser, author of Paulina & Fran

“Banal Nightmare is a blistering assault on contemporary pieties about art and love, an epic Woolfian tapestry of perfect comic rants, terrifying panic attacks, and, most gratifying of all, sincere attempts at human connection. This is the best, most ambitious book yet by one of my favorite writers.”—Andrew Martin, author of Early Work

“Brilliantly observed and unsparing, Banal Nightmare is an exhilarating, often-hilarious kaleidoscopic inquiry into contemporary relationships. . . . Halle Butler conjures a latticework structure of life, rage, dark humor, and incalculable grace.”—Patrick Cottrell, author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace

“A tart, irreverent rant of a novel that takes a sharp turn toward something more serious.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Daring readers will eagerly turn the page to see their own unspeakable thoughts exposed. . . . Butler . . . delivers an emotionally riveting account of modern adulthood through different states of failures.”—Booklist Expand reviews