Wellness: A novel

I’m gobsmacked, and have remained so from page one to the last word. An epic, sweeping, transformative, colossal (adverbs and adjectives are just not enough!) door-stopper of a book, a windswept and fiery, burning satire of a 1990s marriage between a modern couple in Chicago, Jack and Elizabeth. There’s a preoccupation with eternal love, health and well-being, the potent obsession with fitness and strength. How past years’ discarded identities generate the self of today, afraid or unafraid of tomorrow.

Jack is a photographer, but his pictures arise from the chemicals and fixatives in the darkroom, not from the camera. Elizabeth is a scientist who peddles placebos to rejuvenate passion. WELLNESS spans twenty years forward, but reaches back, to their childhoods, shifting back and forth in time. Or should I say Time, since Time is essential here, it subverts the narrative and liquidates expectations. It’s about everything, sort of like INFINITE JEST is about everything, and it’s a parabola, like GRAVITY'S RAINBOW is a parabola, but it’s neither the former or latter. The prose is gracefully placed on the page, despite the legion of info (critics would say info-dumping) that the text provides. Hill straddles the line between saying and pontificating, which may cause some readers to recoil.

Hill has created his own radical, non-starry-eyed romance, a 90s mosaic of Gen X ideology, as Jack and Elizabeth assemble and inhabit their identities via several and ongoing selves throughout the years, to someday evolve or diminish into what they are now. The stakes, at first, seem fairly mellow. I mean, the worst that I thought could happen is a break-up. Hooooold on, about those stakes. Hill drove them hard through my heart. It’s heavy, at times I felt my throat closing up. This isn’t a book I could read non-stop, I had to take breaks to release the tension, otherwise I would explode!

It's also about perception and paradox, connections and loneliness, greed and loss, manipulation and madness. The narrative winds through a buffet of subjects, and love is the polestar, and the threat. Love at first sight is endorsed and dismantled, but never abandoned. There’s so much breadth, from artists to investors, groupthink to prairie fires, children to ancestors, “forever homes,” the World Wide Web, health, sickness, and cures, social media, absence--and the faith in metaphysics, that our souls can travel at night.

Paradox: “…that was a pre-globalized world, a pre-9/11 world, a pre-housing bubble world…when they all sort of understood implicitly that however much they resented and resisted the mass economy, they would also have little trouble eventually finding a job and livelihood within it.”

Thematically rich in artful contradictions, as a new friend earnestly says to Elizabeth: “He practices the art of nothingness, while you practice the science of nothingness. You’re both obsessed with it: nothingness, emptiness, blankness, absence. Don’t you find that really meaningful?”

And this touched my heart, a poignant guidance from the scientist that mentored Elizabeth:

“Believe what you believe…but believe gently. Believe compassionately. Believe with curiosity. Believe with humility. And don’t trust the arrogance of certainty.”

This book is so deep, vast, mind-bending, and provocative, I just can’t do it justice. It’s written for all of us, all the Time, wherever you are, visible and manifest.

Nathan Hill made a significant impact with his debut novel, The Nix, upon its release in 2016. The book, spanning numerous decades and hundreds of pages, delved into the story of a man determined to uncover his family's hidden secrets in his quest to reclaim his own life. Both critics and readers were captivated by its intricate narrative. Although I missed the chance to read that novel, I promised myself to keep an eye out for whatever Hill would create next. When his publisher offered me a copy of his second work, Wellness, I eagerly seized the opportunity to dive into it. This latest tale, while more intimate than his previous work, retains the sprawling and impactful quality that characterizes his writing.

Do you believe in love at first sight? Jack and Elizabeth certainly did. In the early 90s, Jack, a struggling art student, stood on the verge of greatness after escaping the mundane life of rural middle America for the vibrant art scene of Chicago. With the advent of the internet, his work gained recognition, and Jack embraced his newfound subversive identity. Elizabeth, seeking an escape from her wealthy and regimented upbringing, found everything she desired in Jack – an edgy, adventurous artist deeply in love with her. They married, fully expecting their happily ever after.

Twenty years later, their life is far from what they envisioned. The once-blissful couple has succumbed to the routine of married life. Jack, unable to recapture the brilliance of his early work, churns out repetitive images while working as adjunct faculty at a university. Elizabeth, on the other hand, has achieved professional success, manipulating consumers' perceptions for corporations implementing cost-saving measures. Their relationship has lost its spark. Balancing the challenges of co-parenting a difficult eight-year-old and saving for their dream "forever home" takes a toll on Jack and Elizabeth. The idea of separate bedrooms in their new home, which would have been an outrageous thought just a few years ago, seems like a practical solution to ensure their new life together functions in a way that suits their evolving needs. To prevent the deterioration of their relationship, Jack and Elizabeth embark on separate journeys of self-discovery, risking the loss of the most precious thing they share – each other.

Nathan Hill's Wellness left me with much to contemplate. It depicts the erosion of a relationship and the extraordinary efforts required to reignite the flame of love. While this remains the central theme of the story, Hill skillfully leads readers into explorations of numerous other subjects. He delves into topics like modern marriage, polyamory, psychology, art, and algorithms, among others, adding depth to his central characters and shedding light on their lives. Simultaneously, the novel serves as a timely commentary on the first part of the 21st century, offering insights into both the intricacies of marriage and the state of the world. Despite its substantial length of over 600 pages, Wellness never feels overly long. Hill's skillful storytelling draws readers into the narrative, making us think and feel through all the complexities of his tale. It is a nearly flawless American novel and is undoubtedly one of my favorite reads of the year.

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.

Literary fiction generally should not be skimmable, but Wellness by Hill, pitched as literary fiction, definitely is... and, in parts, the skim feels right or warranted. Don't get me wrong; I enjoyed my time with the novel, and the reflections, musings, and wonderings about midlife, values, and the stories we tell ourselves left me thinking, but the long detours into this, that, and the other thing (among others: polyamory, the placebo effect, 1990s underground punk, the evolution of social media) were sometimes curious, sometimes bizarre, sometimes dull. Do you care how Facebook has evolved in terms of programming and algorithm development since its inception? No? Well then skip the next sixty pages of the book. That's the kind of deep, extraneous detour I'm talking about.

The core narrative is compelling and definitely provides an incisive critique of our present moment and the curious hypocrisies and delusions of life in 2020s America, but the deep-dive detours are definitely an interesting choice that only sometimes engage.

I was so excited to get my hands on this book; it seems to have all the themes that speak to me. As a fellow Gen X'er, straight, married with child, educated, and moderately if not highly neurotic, this book seemed to be written for a demographic like me.

And indeed, by the second page I had declared that I was in love with the story and the writing. Like Jack and Elizabeth's courtship, the book starts on a high note. Nathan Hill's writing is smart, witty, and engaging. I made it halfway through the book without much difficulty, even though I was initially kind of daunted by the length.

It was around page 300 that I found myself losing steam, not unlike Jack and Elizabeth's marriage. Picking up the book each day was no longer a priority for me...the story had started to bog down with long chapters on parenting, the placebo effect, prairie fires, Facebook algorithms...I normally love reading about parenting, and I can so relate to Elizabeth's neuroses parenting in the 2000's, but that long drawn-out chapter on her stress feeding her son had my eyes criss crossing...Hill has clearly done his research and he has an extensive bibliography at the end of the book to show for it. The intervening chapters are basically academic journal articles and mini-lectures weaved into the story. If you love academic and intellectual discussions and diverse and detailed tangents you may relish this, but if you just want to read a straightforward story then you will likely find this tedious.

The irony is that while I feel I am the perfect demographic for this book, I am also part of a demographic that doesn't have the bandwidth to appreciate and enjoy this book. I can objectively say that Wellness is quite the ambitious masterpiece - Nathan Hill is clearly brilliant. Unfortunately, I am exhausted and burnt out, from decades of work, childcare, parent care...from technology and the polarization found on social media...from all the things that this book satirizes. As much as I want to really reflect on and dissect what I have just read, I find the book too unwieldy to do so. By page 400 I just wanted to be done, but I had come too far to DNF (abandon it). There is a mild payoff in the penultimate chapters, when we see the traumas that took place in Jack's and Elizabeth's youth that had shaped the people they became. It was just a long wait for that payoff. By the time I was done I was crying in my head "Get me something fast and easy to read next!" (But one of these days, I would like to sit down and take some time to think more about the book.)