I went into Halle Butler’s Banal Nightmare having read the first segment on LitHub and seen (but not read) the glowing reviews. Basically blind.

I’m glad I did because a lot of the reviews have a take on this that would have given me the wrong expectations for this. The book is fantastic satire, infuriating and hilarious.

Banal Nightmare is about a group of ‘friends’ (generously) in their 30s trying to figure out relationships and social dynamics. It’s about going home again to the small town where you grew up and trying to reconnect with those who never left. It’s about figuring out what an adult relationship should look like.

Mostly it’s about failing at all those things. These characters are insufferable jackasses, every one of them. The book is full of smug, selfish, self-righteous jerks, accusing each other of being exactly that. And it’s fantastic.

Halle Butler excels at writing a character’s stream-of-consciousness. A segment will start with a single thought, spiral around in time, remember brutally uncomfortable things from years prior, get distracted by a petty grudge and something on TV, only to circle back to complete the thought as though no time has passed.

A lot of this was uncomfortably familiar. We’re all making it up as we go along — nobody really knows what they’re doing at any given moment — but there’s a specific time of life when everyone is getting married and beginning to become their careers. This book captures the insecurities, cynicism, and ugliness of those days just brilliantly.

That’s not to say the book is unserious, there are a lot of parts of this book that are exactly relevant to the current moment. The difference between progressivism and performance, the freedom that comes with privilege, status, and wealth, and the sacrifices that a serious relationship often requires: all these are themes that Butler explores here. But what sets it apart is the viciousness of the humour, and how surprisingly close to home it gets at times.

BONUS: Here’s a playlist from Butler of songs she was listening to as she wrote it. There are some really thematically relevant ones there – Under My Thumb also makes an appearance in a book I’m just finishing reading in an even more striking way. (watch this space!)

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