As each successive generation comes of age, its collective zeitgeist inevitably leads it to be categorized and labeled according to both the best and the worst of its era. For millennials (those born 1980-1995), the most recent generation to enter into adulthood, they have been doggedly chased by accusations of entitlement and unrealistic expectations about work-life balance.
So, it is only fitting that a wry new novel about a professionally unsatisfied 30-year-old bad feminist is written by one of America’s brightest millennial authors. In The New Me, Chicago writer Halle Butler has created a darkly comedic and highly relatable story about the mindlessness of nine-to-five work and our desperate attempts to believe that tomorrow we’ll transform into our most perfect selves. Butler delivers a delightfully sarcastic account of American office culture and beautifully captures the universality of our most hidden inner monologues. Despite the mess that protagonist Millie has made of her young life, readers will desire her friendship and devour this concise novel by one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists.
Butler will perform a live reading from her new novel at Woodland Pattern Book Center at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 27. Butler is also the author of the novel Jillian, and her work recently earned her a National Book Foundation honor as a top-five writer under the age of 35. In addition to her novels and pieces of short fiction, she also co-writes movies, the latest of which is called Crimes Against Humanity.
