Happy Bad - by Delaney Nolan (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"Delaney Nolan has written a brutal, joyful, surprising, and gorgeous novel of human contradictions. It's a stunner."--Julia Phillips, author of Bear and Disappearing Earth

Hernan Diaz meets Ottessa Moshfegh in this madcap road trip chronicle; a moving display of human connection in the face of violence and climate destruction from a remarkable new voice in fiction.

Beatrice works at Twin Bridge, a chronically underfunded residential treatment center in near-future East Texas, teeming with enraged teenage girls on either too many or not enough drugs. On a normal day, it's difficult for Beatrice and the other staff--Arda, Carmen, and Linda--to keep their cool in dust-blown Askewn. But when a heat wave triggers a massive, sustained blackout, Beatrice and the other staff and residents must evacuate. Facing police brutality, sweltering heat, panicked evacuees, the girls' mounting withdrawal, and the consequences of her own lies, they search for a route out of the blackout zone. A catastrophe novel by turns tender and hilarious, fueled by a low-simmering political rage, Happy Bad is a rocket arrived on Earth.

Review Quotes

"An exhilarating, dynamic, addictive debut, Delaney Nolan's Happy Bad is a hell of a book."
--Jami Attenberg, author of A Reason to See You Again

"Delaney Nolan's breathtaking, sharply crafted debut announces the arrival of an important new writer. The characters who populate these pages are unforgettable. Happy Bad will stand the test of time, but it's also exactly the kind of book we need in our troubled times."
--Jamel Brinkley, author of A Lucky Man and Witness

"Happy Bad shows the too-near future of our nightmares: climate disastrous, opportunities few, food altered, brains manipulated. But this book also gives us the best we can dream of: people who look out for each other, communities who take care. Delaney Nolan has written a brutal, joyful, surprising, and gorgeous novel of human contradictions. It's a stunner."
--Julia Phillips, author of Bear and Disappearing Earth

"This is a preternaturally good novel by a writer who can see the future. Not the 'thing that will happen if we don't change course' but the future that has already crept up on us--the slow apocalypse, the rising water, the burned-out grid. In addition to being a pitch-perfect description of the consequences of capital's love affair with oil, Happy Bad is a riotously well-written, weirdly fun nail-biter of a story--and a poignant defense of human life, however grimy the circumstances."
--Lydia Kiesling, author of Mobility

"What a writer Delaney Nolan is. Every sentence of Happy Bad hums electric. Nolan has written an all-too-real future, hot and drug-addled, and every page will surprise you, delight you, devastate you. It is rare to find a book at once as imaginative and true, as horrifying and hopeful, as this brilliant debut. A major talent, Nolan doesn't shy away from America's biggest problems; she takes them on with wit, humor, and compassion."
--Matthew Salesses, author of The Sense of Wonder

About the Author

Delaney Nolan received her MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Rona Jaffe fellow. She has since received a Pushcart Prize, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, and a Fulbright Fellowship in fiction; her fiction has appeared in Electric Literature, Guernica, Indiana Review, Oxford American, Tin House, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere, and has been adapted into a radio play and a short film. Her work has been chosen as a notable for Best American Essays and translated into Arabic, Bulgarian, Italian, and Polish. Based in New Orleans, she has also received recognition for her reporting in The Guardian, The Intercept, BBC, Al Jazeera, Mother Jones, and elsewhere.