I had not read The Nix, so I really had no idea what style of writer Nathan Hill was. So I requested this book based on description alone. Wow! I was very surprised. There was a lot to unpack from this story. It is definitely literary fiction. It is a story of a relationship/marriage. It is an observation on how technology can create the very opposite health it purports to give its users. It is also a book about two relatable adults who each had completely different, but equally damaging childhoods and how the trauma of their original families carried into their adult lives.

I always love a good story about a marriage as it goes through all its phases. For just that aspect of the book, I would give it 5 stars. I loved the observations about technology in the beginning 25% of the book as they were thought-provoking and relative to life today. I loved the flashbacks to the main characters meeting back in the 90's and how much their world changed from then to current.

Wellness did not feel like escapism. It felt brutally hard to read at times because it really laid bare the realities of the pain and difficulty in relationships...marital and parent-child. While I did not enjoy the pain, I loved the ideas and outcomes that the book arrived at. The reason I dropped one star is the length of the book. While I am not opposed to long books, I don't like them just for the sake of being long. I was engrossed in a lot of the book, but there was about a good 25% that was overkill for me....my mind started wandering.

I am anxious to read more by the author.

Wellness is a sweeping story of young love, abusive and difficult childhoods, and mid-life ennui. We meet Elizabeth and Jack as young college students, new to Chicago and trying to remake themselves. The story goes back and forth in time, which I love. I greatly enjoyed Nathan Hill’s writing and powers of observation, just as descriptive and on point as he was in his debut novel, The Nix. I made lots of little notes with my favorite turns of phrase - for example, referring to an affluent Chicago suburb as embracing the “three magic Ls - liberal, leafy and loaded.”

There are some plot points that are a little too convenient for my taste, and the book is a commitment at 600+ pages. It’s well worth the investment of your time.

“She understood how many people a single person could, over a lifetime, be.”

Wellness is Nathan Hill’s sophomore novel. The book centers around Jack and Elizabeth, a married couple entering middle age. Themes explored include marital satisfaction (or dissatisfaction as the case may be), parenting, and how our parents shape us, and a look at wellness culture including placebos, love potions, and manifesting. This just touches on some of the topics in this book— there was a lot of ground covered, and I learned a lot and thought a lot while reading Wellness.

I really enjoyed this book. Hill’s writing is beautiful and the book flows nicely. I would encourage readers not to be intimidated by the length— I was able to read this fairly quickly and the length helps to explore a variety of issues and really develop the characters of Jack and Elizabeth. Wellness is easily a contender for one of the best books of 2023.

A sincere thank you to Netgalley and Knopf for this electronic arc of Wellness. My review is my own.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5

I’m having a very it’s-not-you-it’s-me response to [b:Wellness|60210807] the sophomore effort from [b:The Nix|28251002] author [a:Nathan Hill|15376492]. I’m a mood reader, and I’m not sure I ever experience the right mood to read about the ennui of middle aged parents, but if I do, it definitely wasn’t this past week.

I say all that as context for why I think I appreciated <i>Wellness</i> more than I enjoyed it. Jack is an artist, dedicated to his own rejection of popular culture, who is running from some truly horrific trauma in his upbringing. Elizabeth is straightlaced, grew up wealthy and has separated herself from her family and its misbegotten comforts. The two fall deeply, world-abandoningly in love, and yet, 20 years on, married and with a child, the purchase of their so-called “forever home” throws them into a tailspin.

On the surface, the midlife crisis facing these two, who have been together for as long as they had been apart, is something we’ve seen a million times before in a million highbrow novels. Sensing Elizabeth’s dissatisfaction, Jack seeks to create a spark, show his appreciation, <i>anything</i> to recreate their earlier passion. Elizabeth, meanwhile, pulls away the more Jack tries to bring her close. It’s a conundrum that is as devastating as it is ordinary.

There was something to Hill’s exploration of the concept of placebo (Elizabeth studies the effect at a morally grey lab called Wellness), and the irony of her finding that the placebo effect seems to do genuine good, yet she can never benefit from it, since the one truth of the placebo effect is that it ceases to work the moment you become aware of it.

And yet, I think this book felt more like it wanted to be Saying Something Important rather than actually succeeding in having anything truly new to say. The characters around the main couple (Benjamin - chaotic friend-turned-developer who never met a new age health craze he didn’t love and is <i>definitely</i> hooked up with some deeply shady investors; Brandie - the rich mom convinced she manifested Elizabeth’s presence in her life; the CFO at Jack’ college who doesn’t even pretend to say the school’s teachers should be good at teaching, rather than creating value through their brand and online followers) were more archetype than person.

I’m not sure what the takeaway is meant to be here. Being a parent can be soul-drainingly hard, but is also rewarding? The internet is destroying human connections, one algorithm at at time? There is deep meaning to be found in art, even when the art tries very hard to be nothing? Capitalism is a scam?

I’m making it sound like I enjoyed Wellness less than I did. But I don’t feel that I’m able to give it a rating, either. I’d probably give it 2.5 stars for how much I enjoyed it, but stepping back, that seems to low.

<i>Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.</i>

Wow. What an epic story. Wellness is a love story, of Jack and Elizabeth, who they are, how they met, how they fell in love, how they fell out of love, how they found love for each other again. But it’s also a critique of our modern era, tackling everything from wellness fads to polyamory to bots and algorithms to the Placebo Effect. It’s somehow both deeply timeless and completely of the moment. It’s funny and sad and moving and just… lovely. I highly recommend reading it.

Thank you Nathan Hill, Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, and NetGalley for providing this ARC for review consideration. All opinions expressed are my own.

I highly recommend this audiobook. Ari Fliakos does an amazing job giving these characters voices and personality.
If you're like me - raising children, lost some days, wonder what your purpose is, this book is for you. All the feels.

Wellness has a lot to say. It is the story of a marriage between two people battling their childhood demons well into their adult lives and a meditation on the intersection of art and meaning and money and status. Some of its considerable length can be attributed to this breadth, but there is also a lot of repetition - some of which feels artful and purposeful, and some of which feels as if the author wrote the same scene multiple ways, couldn't decide which he liked better, and threw them both in. There are also a number of deep dives into well-trodden ideas about psychology and technology that I found rather boring, as well as more esoteric (and therefore more interesting) deep dives related to art and prairie landscape.

I did like it, in the end. The writing was excellent, and although the story was so broken-up by flashback and reverie that it had almost no momentum, its ultimate resolution was compelling. Recommended for patient readers with broad interests.

A 4.5 star read for me. I think many readers will be able to relate to Jack and Elizabeth. Being in a long marriage and at some point wondering if staying is the right thing, if this is what you envisioned your life to be, would you be better off ending the marriage. Very much appreciated the peek inside their childhood to see what was so traumatic in their upbringing that it was a big part of why they did things the way they did. Most of us probably have our own messed up relationships with our parents and can relate to why we choose the people or behaviors that we do - where our insecurities and self defined deficiencies come from. Also an interesting look into "imposter syndrome" and the "placebo effect". I found the transition between chapters to be clumsy and a few times I thought that maybe I had somehow advanced too far in by mistake. A very interesting and engaging story.
Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for an e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed Nathan Hill’s first book, The Nix, so of course I had to try and get an early copy of his long awaited second novel. This is not your average piece of literary fiction as this story is told in vignettes. Each following Jack and Elizabeth on their journey throughout life. From their upbringings to how they met and how they manage to try and maintain their marriage. And what would any literary fiction be without having secrets? The biggest shocker for me was one of the characters facing their secret and how it turned out.

This book addresses some heavy subjects while not losing Hill’s witty style of writing. I look forward to his next novel.

This novel had a lot of potential. However, it lost its arc around the halfway point. It was a story that reflected the everyday trials of making a marriage “work” long term, despite life’s many challenges and curve balls. I felt it got too laborious, rehashing the same issues over and again. I found myself asking why I’d spend time reading a novel that did the opposite of taking me out of the doldrums of real life. Unfortunately I would not recommend.

𝗪𝗘𝗟𝗟𝗡𝗘𝗦𝗦 by Nathan Hill tells the story of Elizabeth and Jack who first met as lonely college students in Chicago. They had much in common, each living alone, but secretly spying on the other. Both landed in Chicago to escape the homes that in very different ways drove them out. While the couple’s meeting was magical, their lives flowed along much as expected over their 20 year marriage. They have careers, a 9-year old son, and are about to become homeowners for the first time. All seems right with their world, but it’s not. Elizabeth especially feels a sense of marital unease and the worse that gets, the tighter Jack clings. ⁣
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This whole setup seems like exactly my type of book and at many times it definitely was. I very much liked when the story stayed focused on this couple and their relationship, but at 624 pages, focus could drift. Hill went down a lot of rabbit holes including Facebook algorithms, the placebo effect, mommy politics, and the polyamorous lifestyle. Some of these added to the story, but they also got tedious. ⁣
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What saved me was the fact that I was doing a read/listen with 𝘞𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 and for some reason those deep dives were easier for me to digest on audio. I’m not sure I would have been able to finish the book without a lot of skimming had I stuck to print. I ended up almost exclusively listening to the second half of the book. All that makes this a difficult book to rate. On audio my rating would be higher than print, so I guess I’ll need to land somewhere in the middle. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⁣
∙

Pros: The author’s first book The Nix was a five-star book for me, and I have been eagerly awaiting his sophomore novel. This book had many of the elements I liked about The Nix—detours and tangents from the main storyline, social commentary, dark humor, nonlinear storytelling, etc. At the heart of this book is a marriage, but the parts I found most compelling were learning about the main characters’ relationships with their families of origin.

Cons: The author weaves so many things into telling this story that it was tedious at times, specifically the parts about psychology and the placebo effect. That being said, I read this 600-page book in one day, so the tangents must not have slowed down my reading experience.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the opportunity to read this book.

I definitely liked this story, about a marriage in a state of flux, better than the author’s first novel, The Nix. Even though, like the first one, it was quite long, it was interesting from the get-go, whereas his first novel seemed to take a while to get going.
One thing about this author - he loves going off on tangents, which is why his books take so long to get through.. Sometimes, they’d be so seemingly off course, that I had to check to make sure it wasn’t a collection of short stories at first. It’s not. Eventually, the sidebars would make sense as to how they fit into the narrative, but man, it would take a while.
A little more fine tuning might have served this book, but overall, it was still enjoyable.
Thanks to #netgalley and #knopfpublishing for this #arc of #wellness in exchange for an honest review.

Whew, this was a doozy (>600 pages!) At its core, this is a story about modern married life, alongside the challenges of parenting and the external pressures of social media and information overload. Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in Chicago in the 90s, and we flash forward 20 years down the road to their current marriage, as they encounter culty mindfulness groups, placebo studies, Facebook wars, and polyamory. I liked the flashbacks to their childhoods and the examination of how their familial relationships formed the context for their current relationship and parenting styles. They weren’t the most likable characters but I still found myself rooting for them as a couple.

Thanks very much to NetGalley and Knopf for the eARC of Wellness! I’ve had The Nix on my TBR shelf for a long time, and I’ll definitely be reading it very soon after finishing Nathan Hill’s new novel, Wellness. I loved the characters of Jack and Elizabeth from the first page—they felt real to me, and the strength of their relationship from the beginning (after a section detailing their sweet, truly introverted courtship, staring into each other’s Chicago apartments from across an alleyway). I cared about them and was rooting for them the entire book. I also loved the depiction of Chicago and the novel’s specific sense of place (even in the fictionalized locations). The prose is superb, as is the author’s use of alternating points of view. As with much literary fiction, the plot per se is difficult to easily summarize, but I’m glad I went on this journey with Elizabeth and Jack and look forward to reading The Nix very soon. Thank you!

WELLNESS by Nathan Hill is a book that will stay in my mind and heart forever. Written beautifully in liquid prose feeling inevitable and pleasurable, the story of two fascinating Individuals who find one another across a narrow divide and ultimately intertwine their lives and fates is powerful, beguiling in the way of stories that urge me to read one more chapter before turning off the light. It felt so essential, so true and immediate that I felt like I knew the characters, in all their wonderful and terrible moments. WELLNESS is one of those rare reads that had me racing, jumping, and thinking back over my own life with its penetrating and compassionate view into how we see ourselves and live our lives. Jack and Elizabeth are incredibly compelling and convincing characters who meet with "Come with" and follow where it takes them -- and I was the happy onlooker. I received a copy of this book and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.

This is a story about happiness and all the forces in modern times that conspire against achieving it -- most of all, one's self.  Jack and Elizabeth spend a long time observing each other before they actually meet when they are college students in Chicago in the early 1990s.  When they finally do meet, they find themselves powerfully drawn to each other -- and soon are inseparable.  They love the life they have created with each other and a community of like-minded friends, many of whom are artists or in the art scene.

Two decades later, Jack and Elizabeth find their happiness -- and connection -- tested in multiple ways: parenting an often difficult
child, the pressures of finding a home and financial security, the dismay of unfulfilled career ambitions, the dynamics of making new friends as adult, and the ongoing impacts of their own childhoods, that shape them in clear and subconscious ways.  Will they be able to find the spark, or even the spark of recognition, that led the unlikely pair together all those years ago?

This book was excellent -- one of the best I've read this year.  The book deftly explores many interesting and timely themes.  It is one of the most thoughtful examinations of how social media mediates and distorts relationships, through Jack's engagement with his father.  The novel portrays how Jack's father's views, and then behavior, are shaped in troubling ways by his increasing engagement with social media.  But the author also shows how even Jack, who views himself as a sophisticated consumer of social media, finds himself unexpectedly falling victim to its influence. 

The book is also quite insightful about several aspects of the human condition, particularly in the modern times, including how people's need to separate themselves from their unhappy childhood often leads them to somehow creating the same mistakes as adults; how building a community of friends as a young adult that feels like family often unravels when people start having children; and the ways that children internalize their parents' unhappiness.   A powerful story itself, the book also portrays how powerful the stories we all tell ourselves are -- and the placebo effect that comes with the certainty those stories provide.

Very highly recommended!

I was so excited to receive this arc! The Nix is still one of my favorite books and I was excited for the follow-up. Wellness is very different from the Nix. Wellness is the story of the relationship of Jack and Elizabeth. The novel jumps around slightly in timelines-from their individual origin stories to their meeting and courtship-to their marriage and ultimately discontent. In the background of the tale is their very 21st century search for self-improvement and looking to escape from their discontent with their lives-leading Elizabeth to create a love potion to help couples fall back in love with one another (it is less magical than it sounds-the potion is a placebo). Wellness is a snapshot of where we are as a society and a culture-always searching for the next big thing that will make us happy and distract us from reality.

Wellness is an easily accessible reading experience for a book about such heavy themes and ideas. The writing is beautiful and poetic and the characters are flawed and unlikeable but still relatable and sympathetic figures. An excellent follow-up to the Nix and well worth the 6 year wait!

Thanks to the publisher for providing the arc via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review!

I absolutely loved "Wellness" by Nathan Hill! Having been a fan of his previous work, “The Nix," I had high expectations, and this book did not disappoint.

Hill's writing once again showcased his incredible talent. It had me laughing out loud on numerous occasions, and the thought-provoking elements of the story kept me engaged from start to finish. His ability to craft complex characters and weave intricate narratives is truly remarkable.

If you're looking for a well-written, thought-provoking, and genuinely entertaining read, "Wellness" is a must-read. Nathan Hill continues to prove himself as a master storyteller, and I eagerly await his next literary masterpiece. Five stars without a doubt!

The novel begins in January 1993 with Jack and Elizabeth's early years of love in Chicago's Wicker Park, jumps around a bit to include their future together as parents and possibly new homeowners in 2014, and dives back into each of their family histories (both ghastly.) The story spans so many big topics and summarizing a 600+ page book is impossible but I would narrow the novel's main themes down to authenticity (in life and art) and psychological manipulation (from family, technology, and the wellness industry.)

I generally refrain from revealing sections that I especially loved for fear that they may spoil the experience for a future reader, but there is a small storyline that was woven in so well that I just have to comment on it. I think everyone will learn something or wish they could force someone they love to read it, and that is about Jack's father's relationship with Facebook. Jack belongs to a demographic of people who know that Facebook (and virtually any social media platform) runs on algorithms to draw users in and then continue to deliver content intended to drive engagement within the platform--because that's how they make money. Jack's father represents another demographic, an almost entire generation of social media users who view the world through a technological medium that they have never learned how to properly use or analyze. The details that author Nathan Hill used in these sections alone would have had me singing this book's praises, but that is just a single storyline. There are so many more perfectly captured themes and detailed characters in this book that my head is spinning in amazement.

To sum it up: this book currently sits in my #1 spot for Best Book of 2023.