Press Reviews

• David Sedaris

  Butler has crafted a novel in which every character proves to be completely, uniquely crazy. Her sense of humour should be studied and celebrated

• Rachel B. Glaser, author of Paulina & Fran

  Halle Butler's Banal Nightmare is a masterpiece, her best book yet. It burns with a wild, unforgiving fire, making most other novels seem vague and ho-hum in comparison. This novel exhibits an eerily spot-on understanding of the private mind as it delves deep into an array of lives, revealing harrowing experiences of loneliness, love, heartbreak, abuse, malaise, depression, obsession, hatred, and revenge. 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

• Andrew Martin, author of Early Work

  Oh man, this book! Halle Butler's new novel 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 favourite writers

• Patrick Cottrell, author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace

  Brilliantly observed and unsparing, Banal Nightmare is an intense, exhilarating, often-hilarious kaleidoscopic inquiry into contemporary relationships. With the comprehensive social gaze of Balzac and the cold logic of Renata Adler, Halle Butler conjures a latticework structure of life, rage, dark humor, and incalculable grace

• Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror

  In Halle Butler's world, everyone hates each other, every day is excruciating in its mundanity, every thought is the beginning of an Escherian journey round and round in hell, and somehow the whole thing is unbelievably funny. 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

• Kirkus Reviews

  Butler writes with a bee-sting-sharp sense of humor and irony, and nothing is sacred, not Hillary Clinton, not Ruth Bader Ginsburg, not Christine Blasey Ford's testimony before Congress. What's most surprising is that this cooler-than-the-cool-kids novel actually has an emotional center that will make your pulse race. . . . A tart, irreverent rant of a novel that takes a sharp turn toward something more serious

• Zadie Smith

  Banal Nightmare will end summer with a bang. It's about turning 37 and realising you hate everybody you know. So funny, so smart, utterly vicious - just brilliant

• LitHub

  The voice of a (tired, furious, disappointed, disoriented) generation

• Chicago Reader

  Butler is a master at constructing a detailed social hierarchy of educated women . . . I laughed out loud

• Our Culture

  A brilliantly funny dissection of adult life. Relatable, even if you don't want it to be

• Susannah Dickey, author of Tennis Lessons

  Highly intelligent, witty and completely precise in its skewering

• Guardian

  Halle Butler is one of the funniest and most exacting novelists of millennial precarity. Banal Nightmare is worth reading just to experience Butler's virtuosic prose. Deadpan, hyper-articulate, quietly affecting

• Robbie Millen

  The Times

  Banal Nightmare is actually funny. Reader, I laughed many times. It doesn't merely gesture to humour. Butler has comic range

• New York Times

  So searingly precise in its 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 . . . It will be immediately and uncomfortably relatable to anyone who has spent nights chain-smoking on a balcony, contemplating their own personal, sexual and social mistakes

• Electric Lit

  The Feel Bad Novel of the Year . . . darkly humorous and brutally honest

• Booklist

  Putting a new spin on what it means to be a killjoy, Bulter delivers an emotionally riveting account of modern adulthood

• Vulture

  A skilled and clever prose stylist who humanely spotlights the most ridiculous parts of being alive in this surprising and hilarious book

• Nicole Flattery, author of Show Them a Good Time

  I loved Banal Nightmare. I was laughing and underlining and laughing. I'm recommending it to so many people. Halle Butler is an absolute genius