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 presence” and slowly “rediscovering a self-assurance that she had buried during her years with Nick in Chicago.” That feeling, however, is short lived. Yes, Nick was annoying and didn’t help around the house. Yes, Moddie needed a change. Yes, going back home was a huge mistake. Unfortunately, the problem is much bigger than that: “The worst parts of Chicago had followed her here, because the worst parts of Chicago had been inside of her.”
Moddie and the rest of the characters in this novel have no redeemable qualities. They are, generally speaking, unhappy, petty, self-absorbed people who spend the entire novel arguing and complaining. This doesn’t mean that they are hard to connect with (let’s face it, we all have bad days where nothing seems to go our way and life feels tiresome), but even when many readers will have no trouble seeing themselves in these characters, they aren’t facing anything serious, so there is no empathy present.
Following Moddie as she writes emails, gets groceries, walks the neighborhood, gets high, watches the television, and thinks about ending it all, craving a cigarette “just so she could put it out on her face, and then maybe burst into flames” is interesting at first. We can feel the darkness, the pressure, the sharp, constant tedium of life slowly crushing every character in the novel. Then, that darkness and pressure morph into something else. As the narrative progresses without a real source of tension, it’s easy to start feeling like the characters, but mostly in relation to the story. Eventually, more than 300 pages of constantly being snappish and grumbling about the “crushing tedium and confounding horrors” of life becomes too much and the book starts to become as flat as a song with only one note.
Despite the dreariness that permeates the narrative, Banal Nightmare still has some shining qualities. The writing is sharp and Butler is a keen observer of the human condition who understands how our worst enemy is sometimes our own brain. There are also many arguments between couples that illuminate the way some relationships turn into circular arguments where everyone feels like a victim but no one does anything about it.
Ultimately, Banal Nightmare is one of those books that will land perfectly with readers who often feel like the characters in the book, and will not land with those who rarely feel that way. “Life was a disappointment through and through and pleasures wilted by the hour.” That line exemplifies the aura of this novel. That line holds a powerful truth at its core. However, more than 300 pages that expand on that line’s sentiment might be too much for most readers.
Gabino Iglesias is an author, book reviewer and professor living in Austin, Texas. Find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @Gabino_Iglesias.