I really enjoyed all of the 90's references however the book isn't my usual style. I was overall pleasantly surprised. it was well written and the story line was just fine. i personally would not normally pick up this book if i had seen it in the bookstore but I believe that people who do in fact enjoy satire on relationships will enjoy this book.

3/5

The thing that saved Wellness for me at all was the rich story telling of Chicago in the 90s. Overall I found Jack and Elizabeth’s character arc boring, trite and lacking what I was expecting from the author behind Nix. I felt like their plight was belabored, and overall it took soo long to many any commentary work making.

I didn’t know what to expect, but I was pleasantly
surprised by this book. It sounds simple…a look at the lives and love of Jack and Elizabeth. Yet, this book was complex. The shifts in time helped to piece the story together bit by bit until a clear image of Jack and Elizabeth’s relationship reveals itself. I liked this book a lot and recommend it.

Not my cup of tea. Nathan Hill is a talented writer, and the book is full of clever ideas, but the combination of Franzen-like sprawling family drama and not-so-subtle social satire made it impossible for me to become invested in the fates of the main characters. I could not like nor feel connected to them and their problems, which is a serious issue in the case of a 600-page novel.

Thanks to the publisher, Knopf, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

Omg, this book. One of my top reads this year. A soaring, sweeping, gorgeous domestic fiction on what guides us in life when there are so many compasses to choose from. I love the meditations on belief here and how we have harnessed so many different sectors of the human experience to be help us find our way towards certainty. The author’s point: we’re looking for certainty in a very fucked up world, in very fucked up ways. Maybe we should just…. Be? For like a second? He says this way more eloquently than me. Wow. Read this.

Both Jack and Elizabeth come from extraordinarily dysfunctional families. Although their geographical and economic backgrounds differ greatly, they both had childhoods wherein their greatest desire was to be ignored.

Both break free from their families to attend college in Chicago in the 1990s, where they find one another and finally enjoy life. After another 20 years, though, neither is dealing well with themselves or each other. Their childhood demons are dragging them both into deep unhappiness.

Independently, they dig into the past to determine what, if anything, can be used now to bring clarity and salvation to their relationship.

Nathan Hill’s first novel was the widely-acclaimed The Nix, and Wellness is a worthy successor, though it could be a bit shorter than 624 pages. And despite the very serious story of Jack and Elizabeth’s relationship, Hill takes some great shots at contemporary art, gentrification, university politics, remodeling and decorating, woo-woo philosophies, Facebook and its algorithms, and more.

After finishing Nathan Hill's 2016 novel "The Nix," I wondered if he would ever write another novel. I loved living in that world and had the distinct impression that he left everything on the page (in the best way possible). Thankfully, I was wrong and his follow-up "Wellness" is just as astute, hilarious, and heartbreaking as its predecessor.

Hill often gets compared favorably to John Irving, (a comparison that I've read that Irving himself agrees with) and I don't disagree that they have similar sensibilities or that you are unlikely to find a reader that enjoys one but not the other. However, a developing hallmark of Hill's work is his magician-like ability to reframe the reader's initial perceptions and assumptions about the characters and situations as the story develops and more information is revealed. This ability is on full display in "Wellness;" the characters feel like close friends throughout the novel even as you feel like you don't know them at all.

Wellness is laugh-out-loud-alone-in-the-dark funny, it is gripping from the first page to the last, and is as important to our reexamination of the 1990s as "The Nix" was to the 1960s.

This was my freaking jam. Please never stop writing Nathan!

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC; I will be buying a hardcover when it is available at my local bookstore. I may by two copies and give one away.

This was a HEFTY read in physical form! It was enjoyable, but extremely long. I think it might have been easier to read on Kindle. Thank you for giving me the opportunity!

Wow - that was a work of art. It’s a LOT but go with it. The writing is breathtaking describing love and family with detail and nuance that is both gorgeous and a LOT - so know that going in. Take your time and enjoy the research included and the questions it prods within the reader (you). This novel is begging for a book discussion group - it’s so chock full of the inner thoughts I have had as a woman with true same partner for 30+ years, kids, careers, and friends. It’s a soul-searching ride and one I loved. Pick this one up and TAKE YOUR TIME reading it. It’s spectacular.

I picked up this book because I had heard about [book:The Nix|28251002] and that it was good - unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to read that one yet. Anyway, I wanted to sample Nathan Hill's work.

Description:
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 each other.

My Thoughts:
Not what I expected, but a very interesting and different read. The book went back and forth between present day and childhood memories by both Jack and Elizabeth. I will say it rambled a bit and the book was probably longer than it need to be. I found the chapter about Elizabeth's family and how they accrued their wealth to be very interesting. The parts about her relationship with her father were intesting too and tells you a lot about how she became who she is in present day. Jack's background was very different from Elizabeth's and he had a very traumatic experience that shadows his life. The book looks deeply at how people come together then grow apart. It looks at marriage and child-rearing, mistakes made and lessons learned. I did like the humor in the book. Some of the deep dives into protocols for Google and Facebook were a little much though. I found the placebo premise for the company Elizabeth worked for kind of disturbing to think people paid money for this. I recommend this to anyone who likes thought-provoking reads peppered with humor.

Thanks to Knopf through Netgalley for an advance copy. This book will be published on September 19, 2023.

This book was so amazing. I loved it from the beginning. Elizabeth was so great. Her thoughts and how she processed her thoughts was so intense. I could see myself going through similar patterns. Jack was a man I felt so bad for at times he just made me feel sorry for him. Their separate childhoods were something else.

Then they have Toby and his episodes were something else. Elizabeth’s thoughts during some of these were so intense.

The author putting in references was great.

I completely and thoroughly enjoyed this book and plan to read this book again and again!

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley and Knopf and this is my honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, Knopf for the eARC.

This book was so interestingly written. Nathan Hill really gave such descriptors of situations, feelings, ideas, relationship building and so much more. I will say there were times that I needed to reread passages so I did not get confused, but this really packed so much in. What a book.

How do I even begin to describe this book...⁣
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First off, I ABSOLUTELY LOVED this book. Thank you @netgalley for the ebook and thank you @prhaudio for the audio -- both were absolutely amazing but I ultimately ended up attached to the audio because the narrator did such a fantastic job.⁣
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Summary⁣
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 numerous quandaries. ⁣
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The summaries for this book seriously don't even begin to capture all that this brick has to offer. Wellness has a lot of humor, which I was not expecting at all, surrounding getting older, life, parenting, etc. Hill somehow manages to get to the heart of what parenting can feel like from a woman's perspective insanely well -- which led me to google him and he doesn't appear to even have kids 🤯 !!

To say there’s a lot going on here would be something of an understatement. Hill packs his book with history, science, landscape, family and above all relationships. The amount of research undertaken is exposed by the notes at the end of the book - prodigious. The result is both an engrossing and at times overwhelmingly theoretical piece of work resting on the relationship between two people whose own hinterlands fill many pages. And those hinterlands are the foundations of the characters’ psychologies in ways so extreme that for all the book’s humor and tenderness, it seems based on fairytale or horror stories. Parents emerge as the villains here, one father and one mother so horrible and obvious in their make-ups that the novel crumbles in their presences.
This flaw weakens the whole book, but setting it to one side, Hill is to be congratulated on that breadth and factual underpinning of his social panorama. There’s so much here. The internet. Capitalism, Postmodernism. I could go on. Ambitious, epic, highly readable but, as mentioned, wonky at its core, this is a beguiling but imperfect work. Bravo for the upside. Pity about the down.

I'm a huge Jonathan Franzen fan, and while the Nix evoked Franzen a little bit for me, this book evoked him a LOT. And that's a good thing.

Wellness use the story of a relationship and a marriage as a framework on which to hang Hill's tremendous intellectual curiosity. Yes, it's a story of two people as their passion for one another waxes and wanes. But I think Hill's real love is non-fiction. He weaves in so many interesting deep dives - - mostly into different aspects of psychology with a touch of business and a bit of university politics. Both leading characters have trauma in their background, and Hill gives plenty of space to slowly reveal their backgrounds and the impact on their relationships and their careers and their child rearing practices.

All in all, I really liked it. It's a bit of a messy ramble of a book, and if you aren't interested in psychology, I don't think the plot line is enough to sustain the reader on its own. I love non-fiction, and to have it embedded in a fictional story made me feel like I really know who Hill is. Or at least made me feel like I'd love to meet him in person. All in all, a fun, well-paced, interesting, literary read . . .perhaps a little self indulgent on the author's part from time to time, but I was there for it.

If there was ever a book depicting how Adverse Childhood Experiences can have a tremendous lifelong effect on your health and wellbeing, Wellness by Nate Hill is it.

Told, distractingly and long-windedly through continuous flashbacks of the Lives of Jack and Elizabeth Bennett, the book presents us with a couple undergoing a midlife marital crisis. The story opens with two lost souls finding their soul mates and winds itself around to a couple who have been together for 20 years, have a child who is likely on the autism spectrum (or he could be perfectly neurotypical and being made to seem odd and out of place by an overly insecure mother), and who are questioning the state of their marriage.
As the story unfolds, via scenes from Jack’s childhood, Elizabeth’s childhood, their teen years, their early days as a couple, Elizabeth’s experiences as a new mother, Jack’s work, Elizabeth’s work, and their present reality as parents, neighbors, and lovers, the story is really about how traumatic experiences in their childhood dictated their emotions and actions, leading to where and who they are now. The problem isn’t their marriage as much as it is the people involved in it.
Wellness makes you think about your own life, your own choices, and what shaped you. At least it will if you can navigate your way to the ending. It took me many tries over a couple of months to make my way through the book. There are a lot of pages, over 500 of them, at least 200 of them are unnecessary to the plot of the story. The book doesn’t’ follow a consistent pattern where we follow Jacka and Elizabeth from meeting to present. Instead, the book feels like a bunch of short stories shuffled like a deck of cards and put together to make the story. One minute you are watching Elizabeth implode because a two-year-old Toby won’t eat the pretty food on his plate, preferring mac and cheese at all meals, then flipping to jack as a child on the prairie with his emotionally challenging mother, then flipping to present day interactions with Elizabeth at a coffee shop, to some random analytical babble on nonsense that doesn’t really belong to the story. It feels all over the place because it is. Just when you get to a good part you are whipped away to something that seem very irrelevant. Some of those irrelevant pieces reveal themselves to have deeper meaning later, others could simply have been left out of the book as neither the story nor the reader became more enriched by it being there.

Would I recommend the story to others? Yes, I already have. I believe there are those who will see themselves and their traumas quite clearly as the story unfolds. I believe that there are those who, even if they don’t see themselves, will question their life and their actions after having read the book. However, I don’t recommend this for people who have problems with patience or focus. It takes quite a bit of fortitude to get through, even if you know the lessons learned might be worth it.

How lucky am I to have received an advance of this book from NetGalley? So lucky! Everyone is in for a treat, an immersive experience, when they read this book when it is published. I am one of the few people who has not read The Nix so must read that next. This book grabbed me from the start as we got to know Jack and Elizabeth as they met as 20-year-olds, and meandered through their childhoods and marriage. I laughed out loud, especially in the internet algorithm section, and so enjoyed reading about Elizabeth's work with placebos. I cried at the end, mostly because it was over. Yes, this was a long book (over 600 pages!) but it never dragged and I loved every bit.

I just went back to read my review for The Nix and I could say many of the same things for Wellness, too. Hill is simply a masterful writer, (e.g. "Immensity plus monotony. That's marriage in a nutshell.") Like The Nix, this is a slower book that takes its time, but if you're into it, you'll find it well worth the ride.

The book peels open like an onion, with gentle call-backs that take you back and forth in time. Nothing is presented at face value. Instead, we keep lazily diving deeper into the present and the past, unraveling the stories of who these people are and why they do the things we do.

Ultimately, this is a story about a mid-life marriage on the rocks. "Parents who acted toward each other less like lovers and more like confounders of an at-home business whose products were children"(Ooof. That's a gut punch of a sentence.

There are no villains in this story. (In this way it reminded me of "Fleishman Is in Trouble.") You explore each person's history and missteps, hopes and dreams. Ultimately there is no easy answers (as is true for any long-term relationship.) You're not sure, even at the end, whether you're rooting for them to stay together or not.

The ideas of wellness is woven throughout the book as a central theme, but is not the subject of the story. Instead, we look at the idea of what it means to be "well." What does happiness and health actually look like? How much of our wellness is based on things we seek outside ourselves (money, prestige, power) versus what we inherently believe or experience innately? How can we forge "well" long term relationships when we (and our concept of wellness, wants, and needs) keep changing over time?

As with the Nix, if you're looking for a fast-paced plot, zippy sentences, and a linear, black and white story where you immediately know who to root for, this may not be the book for you. But, for me it was lovely.

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Isn’t it great when one of your most anticipated titles for the year delivers, and delivers big?
Folks, for all you #TheNix lovers out there, there’s no worry of a sophomore slump in Nathan Hill’s brilliant, #Wellness
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At its simplest it’s the story of a marriage. A marriage that has spanned time beyond the initial bloom of first romance, past the ten year mark when many marriages have already fallen by the side of the road, and is now at the bottom of the U shaped curve of a relationship when longevity, and kids, and ennui have settled in and partners might find themselves asking, “Is this it?”
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It’s a novel about the choices we make, the expectations we have both for ourselves and our loved ones. It’s about parents and children and how we try to escape out pasts while desperate to not pass on generational trauma. It’s about algorithms and hyperlinks and social media’s effect on us and the ones we love. It’s about art, and science and monogamy and how who we were informs who we’ve become.
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It’s a damn stuffed suitcase of ideas that Hill unpacks with sheer genius, and absolutely one of my favorite books of the year. Thank you to @aaknopf for the advance copy. #Wellness comes out 9/19

I wasn't the biggest fan of the structure of the novel, but Nathan Hill's writing and character development are excellent. Jack and Elizabeth felt so real to me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the free e-copy.