On the road, full of grievance and bitter wit: A (fictional) woman for our era

The one-line synopsis for “Bad Nature” is astir arsenic juicy arsenic it gets: A palmy New York lawyer, having received a terminal breast-cancer diagnosis astatine property 40, decides to thrust to California, face her estranged begetter and past sprout him. But this isn’t a thriller oregon a caper successful the vein of, say, Elmore Leonard. Ariel Courage’s debut is simply a fork jabbed into the electrical socket of America. You can’t look distant and, acknowledgment to its bitter wit, can’t halt laughing.

Hester is simply a friendless, Type-A workaholic whose enactment includes helping corporations sidestep the EPA. She describes herself arsenic “prickly and standoffish, selectively extroverted, mostly humorless.” The benignant of idiosyncratic who lies to strangers retired of boredom and shrugs her mode done flings with unattractive men. When her Whitman-quoting oncologist breaks the atrocious news, Hester remembers her mother’s aboriginal decease from cancer. She forgoes chemotherapy, emails her resignation missive and hits the road. She names her tumor Beryl.

Sure, she could committee an airplane. But that would deprive america of Courage’s chaotic picaresque done a agrarian and ravaged America. Hester figures she’ll accidental goodbye to each that with drop-ins connected a assemblage ex successful Pittsburgh, and different connected an aged precocious schoolhouse person successful Chicago. The former, Caleb, is simply a punk turned prima chef. Hester sets a land-speed grounds for toppling his cautiously constructed world. Things don’t spell overmuch amended successful the Windy City.

Things don’t spell good anywhere. Her car is stolen; she crashes a replacement rental. There’s a parking-lot fistfight. She’s pulled implicit by constabulary officers, who are past called distant by an overturned lipid tanker down the road.

Hester could person been simply a witnesser to the hollowed-out interior of the country: the passive protagonist encountered successful truthful galore archetypal novels. And astatine times, Hester does consciousness similar a chromatic skipping crossed a continent-wide toxic lake, with speedy observations afloat of snark. “The entity was insultingly blue, a mean gag … The prima was similar a drunk astatine a party, menacing and vivacious.”

(Henry Holt)

But Courage is arsenic funny successful quality arsenic she is successful her widescreen setting. Hester shares puerility memories of her father’s panic and neglect, and her resulting disavowal of her past: “I wanted to judge I had nary household astatine all, similar I’d sprung from the world afloat formed.” She wants revenge without dwelling connected its origin oregon her trauma — a connection Hester would surely detest. She’d alternatively deliberation of herself arsenic a short-term unstoppable force. Which is not unjustified. “I was an educated and experienced achromatic woman. My beingness was good insulated from interference, constabulary oregon otherwise.”

Interference does get via a young hitchhiker named John. He joins her for overmuch of the journey, causing detours to photograph discarded sites and abandoned munitions factories arsenic portion of a vague task connected ecocide. As a spiritually inclined, politically committed itinerant, John is Hester’s polar opposite, poking astatine her beliefs with the earnestness of a assemblage pupil drunk connected Howard Zinn. He’s annoyed by her shallow contrarianism, but his ain passions aren’t directed toward defined ends. John’s conscionable sidesplitting clip until the apocalypse arrives.

This unusual mates encounters refuge with a New Mexico farming commune and the accustomed level excess successful Las Vegas. (“I thought a pistillate was kneeling to pray, but she was conscionable trying to get a amended space connected her camera.”) The roadworthy travel ends in, ahem, Death Valley, with unit and a antithetic benignant of revenge than Hester had planned. A interaction of Elmore Leonard, aft all.

At times, “Bad Nature” recalls Miranda July’s “All Fours.” A coastal elite narrator, mid-midlife crisis, moving from location and bonding with a younger man. For July, the aging assemblage resets her protagonist’s desires; Hester doesn’t want, successful this sense. Intimacy requires vulnerability. Nor does Hester person overmuch respect for her body, beyond its relation arsenic a instrumentality she tin hone astatine the gym.

Courage’s caller is much akin to Bret Easton Ellis’ “American Psycho.” As with Patrick Bateman, Hester’s one-percenter presumption confers eventual bureau and exemption from the effects of her disastrous actions. She tin spell for broke due to the fact that she ne'er volition be. Where Ellis captured the 1980s done satire truthful acheronian it swallows each light, Courage does truthful for 2025. It’s profoundly impressive, astatine times uncomfortable.

There are insignificant flaws. Italicized bits of blimpish speech radio, which look throughout, are repetitive and facile. An teen representation of a travel from upstate New York to Manhattan runs overlong. These are easy forgiven.

Many novels represent what beingness feels like. A rarer strain captures what it looks like, astatine this moment, warts and all. The satellite of “Bad Nature” fixates connected grievance. Ignores semipermanent consequence. Rejects aesculapian advice. Embraces bawdiness. Extols weapon violence. The caller “Bad Nature,” meanwhile, is simply a sun-blasted comic wonder.

Chapman is the writer of the novels “The Audacity,” and “Riots I Have Known.”