Wellness
A novel
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4.2 • 17 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK • From the New York Times bestselling author of The Nix, a witty and poignant new novel about modern marriage, the often baffling pursuit of health and happiness, and the stories that bind us together
"A hilarious and moving exploration of a modern marriage that astounds in its breadth and intimacy." —Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half
When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the nineties, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago's thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit. Fast-forward twenty years, and now they're grappling with the routines of married life, the challenges of parenting, and the indignities of aging—not to mention cults of positive thinking, polyamorous would-be suitors, Facebook trolls, NIMBY protests, and something called Love Potion Number Nine.
For the first time, Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize each other, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to painful childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process, they have to undertake separate personal excavations or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other.
Moving from the gritty nineties Chicago art scene to a suburbia of detox diets and home-renovation hysteria, Wellness mines the absurdities of technology and modern love to reveal profound, startling truths about intimacy and connection. In this follow-up to Hill's electric debut, Wellness reimagines the love story with a healthy dose of insight, irony, and heart.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A couple sinking into middle age wonder where the magic went in Nathan Hill’s witty novel about modern life and love. Jack and Elizabeth were college students in the ’90s when they met and fell in love against the backdrop of Chicago’s hip underground music and art scene. Twenty years later, the married couple are contemplating separate bedrooms in a condo they can barely afford and contending with an eight-year-old son with chronic tantrums. As his well-meaning protagonists struggle with the everyday frustrations of suburban life, Hill repeatedly flashes back to examine how their earlier experiences—and even their family histories—make their current problems seem inevitable. As laugh-out-loud funny as Hill’s debut novel, The Nix, Wellness is a wonderfully sharp satire of contemporary life—and a surprisingly emotional read about how love can morph into something else.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hill (The Nix) blends a family chronicle with cultural critique in his expansive and surprisingly tender latest. Jack Baker, a photographer, and Elizabeth Augustine, a self-styled polymath, live across the street from each other as college students in 1990s Chicago, where each spies on the other through their windows. After they meet face-to-face at one of the alt rock shows Jack photographs, they connect over their interest in the local music scene and fall in love. Twenty years later, the couple and their eight-year-old son are planning a move to the suburbs. Jack, who's now an adjunct professor of art history, and Elizabeth, a researcher for a lab contracted by the FDA to study the placebo effect in wellness products, both wonder what's left of their bohemian youth and their long-ago voyeuristic romance. One night, they're invited to a sex club by another couple they meet at a bar, with whom they reminisce about the "abandoned" neighborhood where they first met, prompting a waiter to call out Jack for erasing the community's Puerto Rican population. As the Dickensian chronicle shifts between past and present and probes such issues as gentrification, toxic internet culture, and modern parenting, the realities of the couple's meet cute come into focus, and they learn the truth behind their first impressions. In the end, Jack and Elizabeth's story speaks to the way people craft narratives to give their lives meaning, and it asks whether believing in those narratives ultimately helps or harms. This stunning novel of ideas never loses sight of its humanity.
