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A Novel
by Ariel Courage
Armed with a terminal diagnosis, a grudge, and a rental car, Hester sets out to fulfill her lifelong dream of killing her father in this brilliantly subversive and bleakly funny novel.
When Hester is diagnosed with terminal cancer on her fortieth birthday, she knows immediately what she must do: abandon her possessions and drive to California to kill her estranged father. With no friends or family tying her to the life she's built in New York City, she quits her wildly lucrative job in corporate law and starts driving west. She hasn't made it far when she runs into John, an environmental activist in need of a ride to different superfund sites across the United States. From five-star Midwestern hotels to cultish Southwestern compounds, the two slowly make their way across the country. But will the revelations they make along the way dissuade Hester from her goal?
Ragingly singular and surprisingly moving, Bad Nature is a story of stunning detours and twists until its final destination. Part road-trip novel, part revenge tale, part lament of our ongoing ecological crisis, it's ultimately a deft examination of the indulgence of holding grudges, moral ambivalence, and the eternal possibility of redemption.
"Courage debuts with the devilishly alluring tale of a terminally ill New Yorker who embarks on a road trip to kill her abusive and long-estranged father...The layered narrative grows intriguingly complex as Hester approaches her destination. Readers will find this a surprisingly moving portrait of a deeply wounded woman." ―Publishers Weekly
"What starts as a bitter internal dialogue becomes a rich overlap of the personal and the political." ―Kirkus Reviews
"Courage's atmospheric debut novel crackles with refreshing honesty, disarming cynicism, and evocative staying power." —Booklist
"Courage delights and challenges with this mashup of emotions....Bleakly funny, gloomy, and magnetic, this novel's revenge-fueled, terminal road trip will tender surprising truths." ―Shelf Awareness
"Add Hester to the canon of unlikeable female characters I can't look away from, and Bad Nature to novels I couldn't put down. Dark, aloof, disciplined – this novel is reminiscent of the best of Ottessa Moshfegh or Emma Cline. I thought it was brilliant." ―Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes
"Wicked and wickedly funny, Ariel Courage's debut Bad Nature is a dark romp of a book, a road-trip novel propelled by a revenge plot. Nihilism and optimism collide in this story featuring a woman who is simultaneously confronting her childhood and her death. Hester is a caustic yet irresistible narrator, and this evocation of her journey across America reads as both hate mail and love letter to a complex country. Bad Nature is raw, intense, and absolutely mesmerizing." ―Helen Phillips, author of Hum
"Ariel Courage's writing is so self-assured, so piercing. She's like Ottessa Moshfegh's environmentally conscious cousin. Unflinching and darkly funny, Bad Nature is a staggering debut." ―Anna Dorn, author of Perfume & Pain
This information about Bad Nature was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ariel Courage is a graduate of the Brooklyn College MFA program, where she was editor-in-chief of the Brooklyn Review. She's currently an assistant fiction editor at Agni. Her short work has appeared in Guernica, New Limestone Review, and The End. She was also a 2019 Kimmel Harding Nelson resident.
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