All 3 Uses

banal
in
Atonement, by Ian McEwan
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They lay on the far side of a great divide in time, as significant as B.C. and A.D. Before prison, before the war, before the sight of a corpse became a banality.†
Chpt 2 *

banality = something that is uninteresting due to a lack of anything original or unusual
Daylight, and the banality of family small talk, would dispel whatever impact she had made as a ghostly illuminated apparition.†
Chpt 3
But how banal that would have sounded.†
Chpt 3

banal = uninteresting due to a lack of anything original or unusual

Definitions:

(1) (banal)
uninteresting due to a lack of anything original or unusual

Pronunciation: Banal is correctly pronounced differently by various educated speakers of American English.
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)