"Ariel Courage's debut is a fork jabbed into the electric socket of America. You can't look away and, thanks to its bitter wit, can't stop laughing....Deeply impressive, at times uncomfortable....Many novels portray what life feels like. A rarer strain captures what it looks like, at this moment, warts and all....[A] sun-blasted comic wonder."
--Los Angeles Times

"Funny and moving, this is a road-trip novel for the here and now, intent on mapping a way forward even when the end might seem to be nigh."
--The Guardian

"Humor, awe, and grief combine as Hester and an unplanned passenger drive across our confounding nation."
--The Boston Globe

"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

"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

"Courage's atmospheric debut novel crackles with refreshing honesty, disarming cynicism, and evocative staying power."
--Booklist

"What starts as a bitter internal dialogue becomes a rich overlap of the personal and the political."
--Kirkus

"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