Not what I expected… but I loved it! A gripping, contemporary glimpse into the disappointing lives of two different but both dissatisfied coworkers. Relatable, clever and a quick read.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me access an advance copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.

Halle Butler loves to explore the tedium of every day, and Jillian is no different. She gets into the bones of just being a person that lives and works and tries to get through the days. It's funny, sparse and smart. I love her.

Also - it deals with capitalism because how can it not. When I was reading this, it reminded me of an Emily Dickinson line - A speck upon a Ball. (I know, I know, but it did.) We're all so unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Little cogs that will always be little cogs no matter what we do.

It sounds like a monumental bummer, but it isn't.

We have all worked with someone like Jillian, or seen Jillian in ourselves – the over enthused chatty co-worker who seems oblivious to most things in life. I enjoyed in particular here how my sympathies for Jillian and Megan really changed over the course of reading – is Jillian really that bad? (Yes, she really is in places) Is Megan really such a faultless angel with no blame? (You can guess how I feel on that one). Megan’s increasingly condescending inner monologue made my skin crawl but I kind of loved it – it really highlighted for me the Jillian and Megan sides of me and I am still analysing myself now!

A brilliant little book made up of two highly unlikeable characters. Two women who work with each other and neither like each other nor their job. Butler has an amazing ability to create characters who are eccentric but still believable, mundane people in everyday life. The best scene comes when Jillian is asked to pick up party supplies for a school party. We hear her rationalisations for her poor decisions and her rationales are perfectly plausible despite her actions seeming bizarre. It’s a great insight into other people’s minds and reasons behind questionable behaviour. I found myself screaming at the book at some of their actions but I think that’s why the book is so compelling. These characters are so relatable despite (perhaps because of) their poor decisions, bizarre behaviours and unlikability. I’m really looking forward to picking up Butler’s first book The New Me which I hear is a similar tone.

I have loved Halle Butler since reading her first novel, The New Me, and feeling so seen. The two main characters in Jillian are so unlikeable it's harder to say the same, but I do love how Butler doesn't shy away from the dislikeable, illogical, plain annoying parts of the human psyche. We're able to see the darker sides of human nature in these characters, which I think we can all relate to sometimes - it's really interesting to see what these characters become when those elements take up a huge part of their personality. The fact it's set in an office with two completely different characters thrown together, means you get to see each one's judgements of the other - the "wow, they're really weird" - and then go home with each character and see how deep it really goes.

I really enjoyed Halle Butler's second book, Jillian. Much like her first novel, this one delves into the intricacy of living in as a millenial within a ever-increasing corporate-capitalist world. Butler portrays beautifully the painful balancing acts of interpersonal relationships, disintegrating mental health, and self-destruction. I would definitely recommend this book to any of my friends who are traversing a similar path within the capitalist minefield right now.

I’m sorry but I found this very difficult to read due to the formatting issues. It started very well but had to give up sadly.

A curious and at times hilarious novel. Some great witty moments and the characters are certainly memorable, and Butler’s observations are sharp.

At first I thought I didn’t have very much to say about this book, which is a problem when I’m meant to be reviewing it. It’s just about normal people, having normal feelings, and doing normal things. It’s a simple novel about two women who work in a doctor’s office who are too myopic, potentially even solipsistic, to engage with each other in any meaningful way. It’s not even a spooky or psychological self-obsession, just a mundane millennial one. These women are in separate but parallel cycles of doom, but nothing really terrible happens. There is no cataclysmic climax. It’s just life. And what’s there to say about that?

So then I went back to what made me want to read Jillian in the first place. It was first published in the USA in 2015, but has now been reissued, finally with a UK release. I’ve had it on my TBR list since I read Butler’s follow-up novel last year, The New Me—a delightfully mundane tale of a temp worker who isn’t good at her job, or at existing independently as an adult at all. Despite its limited subject matter, or perhaps because of it, I really loved that book. It was widely compared to My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh because of its accurate portrayal of millennial discontent, and it made my ‘best of 2019 list’, as well as many others. There was just something about it, in its simplicity and subtly. But looking back at my review, I experienced the same difficulty trying to express what about it I actually enjoyed.

Like in The New Me (and indeed in Moshfegh’s comparative work)—we are presented with characters that aren’t particularly likeable, but that, if you’re someone who is in their 20s or 30s and lives in an urban space, are deeply familiar. Not naming names.

And that’s not particularly unique. The last few years of women heroes in fiction have been a complete undoing of what came before, in the best possible way. In contrast to ‘the strong female lead’ (vom) we are being presented with women who could not give a fuck. Their lives are average. Their dreams are average. Their relationships are average. They deal with the average ups and downs in average ways and come back to their average homes to sleep off their average woes and then start their average days again. And fuck do I love reading about those women. Those women are all around me. They are the women who make my life a colourful mess.

While writing this, I’ve suddenly become emotional thinking about that scene in 13 Going On 30 where Jenna suggests a rebrand of Sparkle magazine. In direct opposition to her best friend-turned-competitor’s suggestion—that they need more edge and more grit—she suggests a ‘back to reality’ approach.

“Who are these women? Does anyone know? I don’t recognise any of them? I wanna see my best friend’s big sister. And the girls from the soccer team. My next door neighbour.”

My analogy is abruptly terminated as she finishes by saying these are “Real women who are smart and pretty and happy to be who they are.” Because that’s not the case with Halle Butler’s characters. They’re actually the opposite. They are deeply unhappy being who they are, where they are, why they are. But that’s why I recognise them. That’s why I want to see them.

Megan uses the judgement of everyone around her as a distraction from how much she hates herself. She is a typical apathetic millennial who detests any ounce of earnest enjoyment for life because she has none. She acknowledges that she is sad, that she hates her life, but she has no desire to change it. If you do not try, you cannot fail.

Jillian, the titular character, is a single mum who is actively trying to improve her life, but every step she takes is so undoubtedly wrong that it does nothing but deepen the sadness of her situation. In contrast to Megan, she remains in a permanent state of denial that manifests as optimism.

The book leaves you with a sense of despair, that these two characters in their infinite, parallel misery could not find each other despite such close quarters. That might not be a metaphor. It probably just is what it is. But to me it felt like a metaphor for just about everything. How close and yet how far apart we are in this modern world.

While these two characters take us through the story, as the book goes on, we’re given more and more insights from inside the minds of peripheral characters. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why Butler gives us these alternative perspectives. I like to think that it’s the characters gaining awareness of the world around them, and being moved to change, but I’m not sure that’s where we leave them and I’m not sure it matters. Not when the most interesting and unexpected of these comes from Jillian’s dog, who gives us a philosophical statement on the blind repetition of everyday life—something I didn’t know I needed from a novel. Therapy from a dog.

I can imagine that if you have little self awareness, or only surface level relationships with struggling friends, it would be easy to read Jillian and absolutely hate these characters, or find them dull. You could be a casual observer to the spectacle of their misery, detached and judgemental. They are hopeless, and culture for decades has thrived on active pursuers of goals, fate, and destiny. These are not the heroes we are told to seek and indulge in.

But as someone who has had countless conversations with friends about how they can’t shake the dull pain of the simple act of existence, or about how each carefully orchestrated step towards success leads to inevitable failure—these are the protagonists of my own existence. And they deserve page time, too. And that’s what writers like Halle Butler are giving us. A representation of women who try and fail, or more realistically, who don’t try and still fail. A woman does not need to be strong or to be remarkable or to be exceptional to be worth reading about. We are in a lucky place that culture recognises this, and that we are given stories that examine just women attempting to get through the day and allow us to call them literature.

I adored this book. Butler’s writing gives a voice to a character everybody has experience of - the voice inside your head that says the mean, uncharitable, scathing things about every person you’ve ever known. The part of you that wants to roll your eyes at everything. The smart thing about Jillian is that Butler finds this voice in both of her otherwise chalk and cheese characters - on the face of it, Megan and Jillian hate each other because they’re so different; in actuality, it’s their own reflected selves that they can’t stand. With turns of phrase both darkly witty and satisfyingly grotesque, Butler has created a compelling and well-paced narrative about the public and private facets of personal breakdown. Wickedly enjoyable!

I was drawn to this text by the fabulous cover and, whilst I was expecting a more affirming read about the joys of pet owning (poor Crispy!), I was utterly entertained by this novel. I fear that drawing too many comparisons between myself and the two protagonists doesn't indicate great things about my disposition, but I have to admit I shared in their frequent frustrations with everything in the world. I was willing Jillian and Megan to realise their similarities and end up scheming together, but of course that's not what this novella is about, and I happily settled for the moments when their stream-of-consciousness thoughts rallied back and forth in a series of amusing misunderstandings.

I would have liked to have seen more of a variation in the situations Megan found herself in – while I enjoyed reading about her disgraceful behaviour at various parties, in such a short book it would have been nice to have had some more ambitious settings for her – I would have loved to read about her outrageous behaviour elsewhere.

I was holding my breath for a dramatic denouement, and furiously turning the pages in anticipation ... whilst this didn’t culminate in the showdown I was expecting (and hoping for), it didn’t matter so much.

This made for a fun read which I couldn’t put down: would recommend.

Thanks for the copy of Jillian by Halle Butler. I was really looking forward to this title after seeing lots of great reviews for her other title!

Unfortunately the formatting wasn't working on my e-reader so rather than impact on my reading of the book, I'll pre-order instead!

Looking forward to it!

Halle Butler has a wonderful if not bizarre way of dissecting seemingly normal social interactions and reducing them to biting observations - however you can never tell if the character making these observations is inherently problematic or needs help, or both.

"I make things, gee-wow. You think you're an artist? Do you really think this 'blog' is a representation of art, that great universalizer? That great transmigrator? This isolating schlock that makes me feel like I have to buy in to you and your formula for happiness?"

What intrigues me is whether we're supposed to pity these characters or not. Both Jillian and Megan are undeniably having an incredibly difficult time in some way and yet Butler uses background characters to throw a spanner in the works and make us question if they are worth helping when they don't even help themselves, with Jillian frittering away money she could use on avoiding court on a dog for her own self-image, while Megan shits on her peers (and indirectly her boyfriend) for having passion because she cannot source her own.

"Elena was old enough not to lie to herself about the way she really felt about things. Jillian was the kind of person went for the short fix instead of the long fix. [...] Jillian was too weak and was all talk. If Elena wanted to volunteer at a homeless center she did it. She forwent the "Oh how nice of you"s she knew she'd get if she told her friends as soon as the idea came into her head."

I preferred this to The New Me, Butler's work is very tepid and sour, like dried sweat patches and gone-off milk. Her literary aesthetic works incredibly well in capturing the current generational malaise, where concepts such as work, occupation and passion are packaged products of optimization culture, and more often than not - are affordable.

Really interesting writer. Thank-you for letting me read an ARC, I have posted a review on multiple platforms.

A darkly funny character rather than plot driven read, with two fairly unlikeable but fascinating characters struggling with their mental health and how to relate to the world around them. Personally I prefer my characters to be different to anyone I’ve met in real life and even a little sadistic (!) so I found this engrossing. A quick read full of witty and twisted observations that just keep you turning the page for more - but also hoping you don’t encounter any Jillians of your own!

Having read Butler's most recent novel - The New Me - I thought I knew what to expect from Jillian... but this is like that book's awful, even more misanthropic and wild sibling.

Where TNM was biting and satirical this falls flat. The characters have little to no redeeming qualities but in the way where I just didn't care about anything that happened in the story (as opposed to in a way which made proceedings morbidly fascinating). I found the narrative to be messy and confusing too, and nothing anyone did made any sense. If you're at all curious about Butler's writing then do pick up her second novel because it's way better than this one.

Jillian, actually Butler’s debut novel although it’s being rereleased and marketed as her second, is very similar to The New Me, the book she’s most known for. Jillian also centres around characters who are unlikeable and shambolic young women, stuck in dead end jobs. But where The New Me gave its entire story over to a single protagonist, Jillian follows two colleagues - Jillian and Megan - who hate each other and are incredibly self-involved. It’s a novel giving two sides of a story, where neither participant is particularly in the right. I loved the perspective shifts, especially when it left behind Jillian and Megan, and instead focused on minor players in their lives who they were also at war with in different ways, something Butler also did in The New Me. This is a funny and timely novel, but nobody comes out of it looking good except Butler.

Jillian follows two neurotic women that work together and hate each other. Jillian is a compulsive liar and Megan is an outright arsehole.

I thought Butler did a really fantastic job portraying the lives of these women as both incredibly funny yet desperately sad too.
It’s funny because we’ve all had a co-worker we don’t like at some point. We’ve all had those “Oh will you just shut up!?” thoughts. But it’s also a great at showing how these dark thoughts can penetrate all aspects of your life.

I had enjoyed reading The New Me so I was keen to read Jillian. Halle Butler captures what it’s like to live in unremitting depression and yet to not be able to see that in others. It’s very unflinching, honest and raw.
As a side note the formatting on my kindle copy was problematic and distracting with random numbers appearing throughout the text.

I'd say skip this and go straight to Butler's 'The New Me' which plays in the same space of millenial ennui and angsty meaningless but which is sharper in terms of writing style and mordant wit. Both are a bit like Ottessa Moshfegh's younger writing sister but with the same dynamism of voice. There are flashes of wit here but it doesn't really come together.

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for a copy of this book!

This is the kind of style of writing I enjoy and can almost relate too. It’s a short, quick novel and as the characters could be considered unlikeable I found this novel to be just the right length of exposure into their lives.

After reading this I would look forward to readying other novels by Halle Butler