Happy Bad

A Novel

De: Delaney Nolan

Narrado por: Elena Anderson

"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.

©2025 by Delaney Nolan. (P)2025 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"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

"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