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A Novel
by Nathan Hill
Book Reviewed by:The New York Times best-selling author of The Nix is back with a poignant and witty novel about marriage, the often baffling pursuit of health and happiness, and the stories that bind us together. From the gritty '90s Chicago art scene to a suburbia of detox diets and home-renovation hysteria, Wellness reimagines the love story with a healthy dose of insight, irony, and heart.
When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the '90s, 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 to married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter cults disguised as mindfulness support groups, polyamorous would-be suitors, Facebook wars, 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, Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other.
Hill's own theory, evidenced also by his debut novel, The Nix, is that we can understand our present selves by understanding our pasts. That's why he gives us ample episodic flashbacks that shed new light on what we've already read, showing Elizabeth and Jack's lives to be more painful, or fraudulent, or complicated than we'd previously realized, and in so doing, creating a kind of unified theory of their lives. We get long scenes of Jack's upbringing on the Kansas prairie and Elizabeth's rich-kid one in suburban New England, plus a history of Elizabeth's con men ancestors and a chilling set piece about Facebook algorithms. Some parts are more interesting than others (is there anything worse than picking up a novel about the complexities of adult life and having to read about AP classes and SAT scores?), but one could thumb through this book and find any number of standalone episodes to reread...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Chloe Pfeiffer).
In Nathan Hill's novel Wellness, protagonist Jack is from the Kansas prairie, where his father was an expert at managing prairie fires. Prairie fires may look terrifying and unwieldy, but in fact they are often purposeful and controlled, and play a critical role in maintaining healthy ecosystems. In much of North America, prairies were historically sustained through regular, intentional fires by Native people.
There are a few different but related reasons that fire is so effective for maintaining prairie land. Crucially, fire stops the spread of trees and other woody vegetation by burning saplings before they mature enough to disperse seeds. If those saplings get too big, they steal sunlight and water from the prairie plants ...
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Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Wellness is one of the funniest, saddest, smartest novels I've ever read. In his portrait of one foundering marriage, Nathan Hill has encapsulated the pathologies and possibilities of our troubled era. With his razor-sharp satire and heartbreaking pathos, his stylistic virtuosity and human warmth, Hill has written both a propulsive page-turner and an artistic achievement of the highest order. I didn't think I could love a book more than The Nix until I read Wellness. It's a flat-out masterpiece.
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