Book Review: ‘Banal Nightmare,’ by Halle Butler

[Pelican Press 0]

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Book Review: ‘Banal Nightmare,’ by Halle Butler

BANAL NIGHTMARE, by Halle Butler

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There are some novels so searingly precise in their ability to capture a certain moment or experience that you have to stop every few pages to send another perfect quote to your group chat. Halle Butler’s latest, “Banal Nightmare,” is one such book, with painfully accurate renderings of everything from the lackluster dating pool of ************* men (“For the love of ****, no more losers, no more strivers, no more men with something to prove about themselves”) to the imbalance of domestic duties between the sexes (“She did all of the laundry, cooked all of the meals, took out the trash, cleaned, shopped, paid the bills, all of it, he did none of it, she did all of it, holy **** for 10 years all of it”) to the pampering of millennials (“the coddling infantilization of her generation, who, though well into their 30s, seemed to need constant affirmation and authoritative direction to make it through the week”).

The novel follows Margaret Yance, or “Moddie,” a 30-something woman living in Chicago who has just broken up with her boyfriend of 10 years. After the split, she flees the city for the summer, returning to her hometown, a place that is simply referred to as X. Back in this small, do-nothing community, she reconnects with old friends in an effort to escape the intrusive thoughts about her ex and about her every fault, desperate to relieve herself of the impending feeling that she has already ******* at life. Of course this is all easier said than done, and Moddie starts the book struggling to rid herself of, well, herself. “The worst parts of Chicago had followed her here,” she thinks, “because the worst parts of Chicago had been inside of her.”

As Moddie begins to clumsily insert herself into her hometown’s social scene, she tries to navigate her friends’ domestic struggles. Because she’s not the only one floundering — everyone around her, it seems, is also coming to grips with their own relationship highs and lows, career realities and visions for the future. Often, this leads her to bleak realizations about “how unessential she was to the rest of the world now that she was childless, unemployed, middle-aged and single.”

As she settles in, Moddie makes a million little social missteps, unleashes long and dramatic soliloquies onto her best friend, Nina, and spends her nights punishing herself for her breakup. But as the summer winds down and a chill hits the air, Moddie begins to interrogate why she’s prone to certain toxic behaviors and habits, and through some unearthed traumas, begins to let go of her own expectations to be anything other than her entire, authentic self.

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