Everything is the worst in this 'Banal Nightmare'

A book can be many things at once, and sometimes those things can be diametrically opposed. Halle Butler's Banal Nightmare is one of those books. Sometimes entertaining and sometimes dull, often hilarious but also relentlessly uncheerful, and packed with brilliant observations as well as tedious arguments plucked from any living room in a small town, Banal Nightmare is full of swinging pendulums that make for a dark, chaotic read that flies very close to the line between fiction and nonfiction.

Moddie is tired. Life feels like a carousel of bad things, and her relationship seems to be the worst of it. Desperate for a change, Moddie leaves her boyfriend and moves back to her hometown in the Midwest.

The change is rough, and while Moddie goes to events and parties and spends some time with her old friends, the ennui is still there, accompanied by regret and guilt at leaving her boyfriend and a growing sense that no one likes her and that everyone else is wrong about everything. And she isn't alone. Every person Moddie meets is fighting a similar battle, both with themselves and with those around them.

Moddie and everyone else in this story is experiencing the same profound, nagging sense of dissatisfaction, and that makes dealing with others much harder. Banal Nightmare is about feeling like everything sucks. At the start of the novel, there is a sliver of hope as Moddie changes her life and finds herself hanging out with her friend Nina, feeling "a deep gratitude for her prese.