The New Me

mean.

I m in a place in my life where I want to be around people who have their shit together and people who are going to help me grow. I m at my limit, and honestly if you can t stand up to your own mother, you probably aren t bringing that much to the table for me anyway.

The choral girl laughs and says, Right?

I note this woman s shape-shifting performance. How by saying a thing, she becomes it. As she complains about how boring it is to hear her friend complain about her mother, as she goes into detail, masterfully reenacting specific boring conversations (both between her and her friend, and her friend and her friend s mother), she is essentially becoming them both, becoming the boredom she claims to want to remove from her life and mind, but which have complete control of her, and she doesn t notice that by saying I don t like this over and over she is just drawing herself closer to it, essentially becoming her friend and subjecting us all to what she claims to hate.

recognize themselves in Halle Butler's new novel." Nylon

"Wake up, look in the mirror, swear it will all be different today. Sound familiar? Here's that feeling in novel form." Elle

"Deftly shifts . . . between hope and anxiety." The Wall Street Journal, "The 10 Books You ll Want to Read This Spring"

"[A] gut-punch . . . Butler does a great job capturing a certain kind of ennui with pitch perfect tone and dark humor." Brightest Young Things, "The Best Books of 2019 (So Far)" 

"[An] instant classic . . . pleasingly cruel [and] horribly funny." New Statesman America

"A skewering of the 21st-century American dream of self-betterment. Butler has already proven herself a master of writing about work and its discontents."  The Millions 

"Millie is just the kind of misanthropic, hopeful/doomed thirty-year-old we ve all known, and/or been, and/or loved, and/or hated. Butler is an essential contemporary voice." LitHub

"The kind of humor found in The New Me is so sharp it cuts." Popsugar

"Butler s curmudgeonly, black-humored depiction of what now passes for work, for friendship, for a life will appeal to fans of Ottessa Moshfegh." Newsday 

"So precise and cutting you might find yourself laughing, or shivering, with recognition."  Vulture, "6 New Paperbacks You Should Read Right Now  

"Darkly comic [and] highly readable . . . Butler presents a vivid portrait of her pitiful yet pitiless protagonist. It s hard to know what Millie needs most: medication, a hug or a restraining order." Minneapolis Star Tribune

"A sharp, darkly comedic examination of capitalism, millennial life, and how to escape it all."  Bitch Media

"Quick-paced . . . laugh-out-loud angst."  amNewYork

"Butler s incisive prose cuts sharp. Millie is, like us all, nominally an adult in a world that finds little dignity in adulthood."  Chicago Review of Books

"[The New Me] brilliantly captures the anxiety of the era . . . It s depressing and hilarious, cynical and side-splitting. Butler s observations of character, dialogue, and social class are barbed and relatable." Newcity Lit

"[The New Me] dives deep into the idea of millennial burnout. . . Many readers will identify with Butler's psychologically astute yet somewhat hopeless inner monologue." Mind Body Green

"A sharp and observant writer, who takes to task the tragicomedy of modern capitalism . . . Butler has created a disquieting heroine with an indelible voice." Publishers Weekly

"A bouncy, profane, highly addictive novel about work, female friendship, and other alienations. Halle Butler s insane talent shimmers on every page of this deadpan misanthrope s ode. A must-read!" Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Gold Fame Citrus and Battleborn

"The New Me renders contemporary American life in such vivid, stinging color that certain sentences are liable to give the reader a paper cut. But you ll want to keep on reading anyway. Halle Butler is terrific, and I loved this book." Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

"A dark comedy of female rage. Halle Butler is a first-rate satirist of the horror show being sold to us as Modern Femininity. She is Thomas Bernhard in a bad mood, showing us the futility of betterment in an increasingly paranoid era of self-improvement. Hilarious." Catherine Lacey, author of Nobody Is Ever Missing and The Answers
 
"A bleak and brutal book that exposes a nearly unbearable futility to life in the workforce, not to mention life outside it. Butler s vision is funny and raw and dark a cautionary tale, hilarious and intimate, against growing up and making do." Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet

"Halle Butler has a way of looking at our twenty-first-century neoliberalist condition that simultaneously exposes its brutality and renders that same brutality absurd, hilarious, fizzy with humor.  She's an incisive, curmudgeonly bard of the uniquely precarious times we live in, and it is crucial that you read her immediately." Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine