Bad Nature

A Novel

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Pub Date Apr 01 2025 | Archive Date May 02 2025
Henry Holt & Company | Henry Holt and Co.

Description

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 experience 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 for our ongoing ecological crisis, it’s ultimately a deft examination of the indulgence of holding grudges, moral ambivalence, and the eternal possibility of redemption.

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...


Advance Praise

“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

Bad Nature is a rare gift; an audacious, insane, and relentlessly American first novel. Ariel Courage casts halogenic light upon the only question still worth considering in these, the earliest days of our extinction: What are we to do with our wretched time left? A propulsive, often terrifying remaking, through gray-eyed and perfect metaphor, of the nihilist manifesto, the road-trip tale, and the revenge plot—all, stunningly, at once.”

—Alexandra Tanner, author of Worry

“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

Bad Nature has so much to say; it's angry and heartwarming, funny and poignant. Hester is the character we love to hate, but end up loving wholeheartedly.”

—Jessica Nock, Main Street Books, Davidson, NC




“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...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781250360885
PRICE $28.99 (USD)
PAGES 304

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Average rating from 26 members


Featured Reviews

I was not expecting that I would follow Hester in such a unique quest. Traveling west, while dying, to kill her own father. I was also not expecting that I’d laugh so much along the way.
Ariel’s writing is smart, witty, erudite but not pedantic. Hester is supposed to feel like an unlikable character, but I love her “bad nature”. I don’t know if the book title refers to her ill disposition with everything or just her own body turning on her in such a vicious and devastating way, maybe that’s for her reader to decide.
I will be rereading this book as soon as it’s released as an audiobook and I hope someone buys the rights to adapt it into a movie. Great lines, with beautiful American scenery on the back- and foreground.
I’ll be following Ariel Courage for more works. This was a damn good book!
Many thanks to NetGalley and Holt’s Catalogue for letting me read an ARC!

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I laughed the whole time I was reading this book. This was like the Kill Bill version of when you have nothing and everything to live for, would you seek the vengance you've been dreaming of? What would happen if you just.. went for it? As equally eye opening as this was about environmental issues, I also enjoyed our main character's slow spiral into coming to terms with her cancer, and her heart througout.

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