Ariel Courage presents a provocative, hypnotic excursion with her debut novel, Bad Nature, which offers a road trip, a revenge fantasy, and a snarky sendup of American culture.
Courage's mesmerizingly repellent protagonist, Hester, relates early in her narrative: "I was always going to kill my father." This intention shifts from someday to immediate when, just after her 40th birthday, she receives a breast cancer diagnosis. The oncologist tells her that, without treatment, she has six months to live. With characteristic, practiced detachment, Hester quits her successful job as a lawyer and leaves Manhattan in her Jaguar E-type, aiming for her long-estranged father's new home in Death Valley. She will kill him and then herself with the gun in her glove box. Simple.
Hester picks up a hitchhiker, John, who becomes her unlikely companion on a convoluted route toward the eventual destination. John is a principled traveler: eschewing consumerism, he photographs Superfund sites, documenting destruction. Stops along the way include Hester's (only) ex-boyfriend from college and a friend (likewise) from high school, with disappointing if predictable results.
Hester's first-person voice is deeply sarcastic, darkly funny, and almost entirely self-aware. Bad Nature's title offers commentary on Hester's terminal cancer (and her mother's), on the violent impulses of her hated father (and her own), on the environmental devastation John is called to witness. Hester's carefully cultivated cynicism is her final weapon, and its potential loss might be the most painful and surprising part of this madcap expedition. Courage delights and challenges with this mashup of emotions, until readers may be surprised, in turn, to care about Hester after all. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia