Bad Nature
A Novel

Quotes

“Courage’s atmospheric debut novel crackles with refreshing honesty, disarming cynicism, and evocative staying power.”
—Booklist

“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

“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

“Bad Nature is a disarmingly dark and hilarious take on the road novel and small-n noir. Or is it an eco-thriller? Either way I found Hester an addictively readable narrator: shrewd, catty and vengeful. I loved how the novel manages to smuggle in both environmental ethics and a contagious tenderness in spite of itself; a paean to daughters of disappointing fathers everywhere. I was utterly gripped.”
—Daisy Lafarge, author of Paul