Banal Nightmare

Margaret Anne "Moddie" Yance, a sharp-tongued, self-sabotaging woman, has returned to her Midwestern college hometown of X after a decade in Chicago. She moved back at the urging of her best friend, Nina, to recover from a painful breakup with Nick, her longtime boyfriend, whom she now considers a covert narcissist. The breakup was precipitated by Moddie's impulsive affair with a coworker, which jolted her into recognizing that she had been emotionally numb throughout her relationship with Nick. After she ended things, Nick guilt-tripped her for months by phone, and when she tried to reconcile, he revealed he was already seeing Gracie, a 24-year-old arts administrator. Devastated, Moddie quit her job at a Chicago educational nonprofit, cashed out her retirement savings, and moved to X, where apartments are cheap and her childhood friends live.

Moddie's reentry into social life is rocky. At a party hosted by Bethany, a former high school acquaintance who recently published an opinion piece in The New York Times, Moddie alienates nearly everyone she speaks to. She delivers an abrasive monologue about NPR, gets into a heated argument with Kimberly, a university employee in Bethany's social circle, about social media and corporate mind control, and fails to connect with two mothers discussing childhood literacy. Only Nina's late arrival rescues the evening. Back at Moddie's apartment, the two women trade darkly comic stories about childhood traumas, including Moddie's sexual assault by a neighbor boy and a summer camp whose owner was a child molester.

The weeks that follow are bleak. Nina and Pam, Moddie's other close childhood friend, are rarely free. Moddie spends her days driving aimlessly and cycling through obsessive thoughts about Nick. She dwells on how Nick discouraged her art practice, dismissing her prints and gradually absorbing her creative energy in service of his career. She resists the powerful urge to call him and sends a lengthy, humorous email to Nina and Pam proposing a trip to a golf course from their childhood. Pam, consumed by a new Visiting Artist Program she is launching at the university, responds that she might be free in mid-to-late September.

In late August, Pam hosts a reception to welcome the visiting artist, David Winterbottom, a New Media artist who accepted the residency because he is depressed after the end of a 17-year relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Aurelie. David gives a lackluster presentation. The narrative shifts into his perspective, revealing a man who enjoyed watching Aurelie cry, admired his own aging appearance, and berated a younger woman for misusing literary terms. Meanwhile, Kimberly privately seethes about being excluded from party planning and judges those around her with contempt.

Moddie's social world begins to shift when Bethany invites her to game night. The evening is stilted, but afterward, Bethany asks Moddie to stay for cigarettes and conversation. Emboldened by wine, Moddie tells Bethany a story she has carried for years: A fellow student named Alan asked her out for a beer, then refused to take no for an answer, followed her home, forced his way into her apartment, and sexually assaulted her while she drifted in and out of consciousness and repeatedly told him to stop. When Moddie later began dating Nick, who was Alan's friend, Nick insisted she make peace with Alan. Moddie complied, and over the following years she endured increasing social exile orchestrated by Jen, Alan's girlfriend and later wife, who gradually excluded Moddie from group events. The last time Moddie saw Nick, she tried to tell him about the assault, but he dismissed her.

Bethany responds with empathy and strategic counsel. She suggests Moddie email Alan directly, predicting he will be terrified of exposure, especially now that Jen has been diagnosed with a curable cancer and the two have eloped. Bethany also mentions potential job opportunities, including a printmaking class and a grant-writing position.

Energized, Moddie writes a two-hour email to Alan containing a graphic account of the assault and a critique of his artwork. She intends it as a cathartic draft but sends it accidentally. Alan responds with a qualified non-apology, writing that he can "recognize that my behavior was aggressive and inappropriate" while framing Moddie's anger as something she has "carried around" for years. Moddie, Bethany, and Nina analyze the email together on a bench, agreeing it is insincere and self-serving. Bethany outlines an elaborate revenge fantasy. Pam, crossing the quad, spots the three women laughing together and turns away, stung.

As fall deepens, several relationships fracture. Pam and her partner Craig's domestic life has deteriorated into cyclical fighting and mutual resentment. Pam develops an intense emotional attachment to David through increasingly intimate lunches, while Craig is consumed by his attraction to Petra, his Bulgarian intern. When Craig spots Pam and David on the quad and sees their fingers briefly entwine, his feelings toward Pam cool into detachment. Meanwhile, Kimberly's husband, Bobby, endures her nightly rants while fantasizing about leaving. When Kimberly plans a Christmas trip to Los Angeles, Bobby tells her he is moving out and has consulted a divorce lawyer.

Moddie delivers a chaotic guest lecture in David's class that veers from grant writing into a sermon on the soul and the moral dimensions of art. At an arcade afterward, she dominates David at air hockey and tells him a long, disturbing story about a college professor who seduced her. David grows uncomfortable and leaves abruptly. Moddie walks home feeling euphoric and buys plane tickets to visit an artist friend in New York, but soon cycles back into shame and frustration.

Bethany throws a blowout winter party with fog machines and disco lights, timed to coincide with Kimberly's absence. Craig is humiliated when Petra's friends mock him about his advances toward his intern. In the backyard, David bluntly asks Pam if she wanted to sleep with him, then tells her that coming to X has been one of the biggest regrets of his life and calls Moddie a "legitimate psychopath." Inside, Moddie dances wildly to the Bee Gees, strips down to a leotard, and becomes the life of the party. Peter, a literature professor and Craig's friend, bonds with Moddie over a shared intellectual passion and asks her on a date. She tells him to get her number through Craig, kisses his hand, curtsies, and leaves.

Alone in her apartment that night, Moddie opens an email from her father informing her that the sale of her family's ancestral farmland has yielded a substantial inheritance. Nick's presence floods her mind. She sobs, then recoils as she recalls him taunting her about the money, warning that nobody likes a rich girl. She walks the neighborhood in a daze, finds an unfamiliar clearing, and sits on a bench. She mentally releases Nick by tapping his imagined face on the forehead, whispering "boop," and watching him float away. Looking up at the winter sky, she sees a pulsing red light that resolves into a shimmering, triangular shape moving in a precise, repeating pattern. Her mind goes completely quiet. She understands she is looking at something meant for her alone.

An unsent or unread email from Nick constitutes a lengthy confession and love letter. He writes that sex with Gracie was the most transcendent experience of his life, that he pursued Gracie partly to make Moddie jealous, and that he broke up with Gracie because Moddie's voice kept whispering to him. He calls Moddie a demon and a rabid weasel but also the love of his life. He reveals he knew about the inheritance before Moddie left him and begs her to let him come home.

A blizzard blankets the town. The novel ends with Chrissy, one of the game night mothers, bundling her toddler son Adler into a snowsuit and placing him alone on a sled at the top of a steep hill. She tells him that real satisfaction comes from inside, not from looking to others for comfort. The sky above is cold and blue.