Wellness: A novel (OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK)

Make sure you read the bibliography at the end so you can see how research informs literature. So much to digest in this book but mostly, love remains.

I have the physical book and audiobook, and once I got started alternated between the two to get through this one as quick as possible. Very thought provoking and well told story.

Hill’s magnum opus is an ambitious endeavor. It’s an exhaustive, deep-dive into modern marriage and American culture. Jack and Elizabeth meet in college in Chicago in the early 1990’s. They fall quickly and wildly in love, certain that their bond is fated and unique. Both are fleeing traumatic and stifling family environments, eager to carve out their own identities. Twenty years later, their union is on shaky ground, and both are grappling with the many stresses and strains of a long term marriage. Each is struggling with their own issues, surprised that they’re no longer on the same page. Their once-easy compatibility is now stilted. Jack is bewildered. Elizabeth feels bored and smothered. They are at a crossroads in their relationship, and are also parenting their young son, Toby. Hill examines the marriage in intricate detail. The 600-plus page book allows the reader to truly get to know the characters and their complicated backstories. The results are often engrossing, frustrating, luminous, thoughtful, tedious and depressing. Amidst the crumbling marriage excavation, Hill also skewers American society and all that entails, offering up sharp, sometimes funny, and acerbic commentary on physical fitness, wellness, toxic positivity, tenure, work, success, sexual exploration, parenting, social media and changing relationship dynamics.Hill writes well and though this is the first of his books that I’ve read, it’s apparent that he wanted to take the reader on an expansive, encompassing journey into the lives of these earnest and troubled characters. Because of the scope and heft of the book, it wasn’t one that I could read without intermittent breaks. I picked it up frequently and would then set it aside occasionally, not because it wasn’t interesting, but because the material was often dense and involved. It’s not a light read, and will require an investment of time. It’s a book to ponder. The last portion of the book was the most satisfying to me. The reader finally discovers Jack and Elizabeth’s motivations, that run like electric currents beneath their carefully curated exteriors. The sudden revelations are subtle, stark and shocking. These particular scenes are so finely-drawn, steeped in melancholy and illuminating clarity. The book’s redemptive conclusion ties the story together in a full-circle moment that is masterfully done.

It’s kind of nice when somebody with vast curiosity sits back and takes a critical, and often cynical, look at modern life. Sort of helps you put the whole big mess into perspective, enough to laugh at the things we assign more seriousness and worry to than they deserve. How much of it all is just plain tomfoolery? Seems plenty.In his second novel, also very, very long like The Nix, captures much of how we live and love as he follows Jack and Elizabeth from the moment they notice each other gazing out the windows of their apartments (a truly engaging opening many who have ever desired another from afar will relate to), to their meeting, courtship, early marriage, and then twenty years in when the going gets tough and rocky. Along the way, he digs into the past of each so that we learn how different and also similar they are. He uses their careers, he an artist and she a research psychologist, to explore various aspects of modern life, especially the propensity of people to succumb to suggestion. For example, Jack’s photographic art that appears to have no meaning (even to him until he realizes he’s reliving his past and guilt through repetitive recreation) and Elizabeth’s work on the placebo effect (to which even she falls prey until the effect on those near her hit her with a realization).Some readers, especially those not familiar with Hill’s first really stunning novel, The Nix, may at first not fully appreciate how he veers from the path of Jack and Elizabeth together, but it’s in these passages that he really shines. For instance, anybody who has lived in the American Midwest (where he grew up) will find his descriptions of the Kansas plains and those who farm them fascinating and enlightening. Many, hopefully, will find his deep exploration of Elizabeth’s family fortune and the whitewashing of its history a telling commentary on how great riches sometimes spring from less than savory activities. And, if you’re among those who wonder about how social media seems to know so much about us and particularly how it manipulates us and appears so hard to control, for you his long but riveting excursion into the weird world of algorithmic learning as it relates to the relationship of Jack and his father will be quite revelatory. Then there is Elizabeth’s work in the placebo lab that shows just how susceptible we humans are to both suggestion and the confirmation of our biases. And, there is more, too.As for length, yes, Wellness runs 600 pages, but it never wears its welcome. Even when Hill wanders from the storyline, he will keep your attention; in fact, it’s at these times he makes you really glad you decided to put aside the tomfoolery of modern life to read about it in Wellness.

I loved Nathan Hill’s debut novel, “The Fix”, and I was reminded why when I started his new novel, “Wellness”; it’s his wit, his satire, his irony, his characters! I immediately though: “Thank heavens there are 600 pages of this!”Prepare to be consumed (in a good way) by the story of Jake and Elizabeth. They meet as college students in the 1990s (remember those nascent days of the World Wide Web?) And we follow their story for the next twenty years, with flashbacks to their truly horrible childhoods.“Wellness” is full of delicious information on a myriad of topics (e.g., “picky eater” parenting, “The Placebo Effect”, sweetened condensed milk, and more.) Hill clearly loves eclectic research and the novel even has a Bibliography if the reader wants to take an even deeper dive into the many fascinating topics.But it’s really “about” manipulation in modern society. Through Jake and Elizabeth’s story, Hill illuminates all the ways we are manipulated; be it “wellness” and “fitness” snake oil, self-help charlatans and dubious therapies to cure our ennui, Facebook algorithms, conspiracy theories and computer bots, religions both old and new, the list goes on. And then there are the ways we manipulate each other, both consciously and unconsciously; husbands and wives, children, parents, sibling, friends.Most interesting, perhaps, are the ways we often misattribute our own feelings/emotions and manipulate ourselves.“Wellness” both entertains and enlightens. Hill even has a little fun poking at his readers when a friend of Jack’s introduces him to the internet and tells him that traditional printed books will now be a thing of the past:“Consider the book—and I mean the technology of the book, the actual physical form of the traditional printed codex book. You really have no choice but to read it in the way that’s been prescribed to you, front to back, linearly, in order. You have no agency in that process. To access a book, you must submit to the tyranny of the author. Thus readers of traditional books participate in their own oppression and subjugation.”Ha! Cheeky of you, Mr. Hill! But I’ll happily submit to your oppressive authorial tyranny any time!