Wellness is a beautiful book, with so many themes I had to slow down my pace while reading in order to take it all in. At its heart, it seems to be about a couple’s marriage and the quest for self-improvement we all share (thus the title), but it extends so much farther than that. At 600+ pages, it’s an investment for sure, but well worth it.
The couple at the center of the story, Jack and Elizabeth, meet as young students in Chicago and think they are soulmates (they watched each other through the windows of their apartments for quite some time before actually meeting–think “cute” stalking). We find Jack, who grew up on a farm, now all alone in Chicago, estranged from family and juggling cultural changes, his education, and his art. Elizabeth also has a family she has escaped, so this becomes the seed of their bond.
The book follows the couple through their hopeful and struggling youth to middle age, when they are facing their own mortality and trying, along with all the people they know, to “self-improve.” It also delves back into their family histories. Elizabeth comes from a moneyed family built by a less-than-scrupulous tycoon, and she denounces their money to make her own (but always with the knowledge that she can fall back on it). Jack is from a small plains farm and his dad is a fire starter/manager for the crop fields (I was fascinated by the details about how all that works).
The book also follows both Elizabeth’s and Jack’s careers. Jack studied fine art and photography, and his specialty came about in the most fascinating way. I won’t spoil it here, but it was pretty much an “Emperor's New Clothes” type of admiration that happened. He also works as an adjunct professor of fine art, and his frustrations with that racket (no benefits, poor pay, no respect) ring true.
Elizabeth has quite an interesting profession. She studied psychology and is conducting studies for a “wellness” facility when she has an interesting breakthrough about the placebo effect. The ethics around that are fascinating, and they surface in her friendships as well as in her financial windfall. So, what else does Wellness mean in the book? Well, it’s clearly not just the medical sense, but familial wellness and the overall wellness of a long marriage; all of these themes are so well-explored. The book also paints a compelling portrait of Jack and Elizabeth’s marriage, which is not sugar-coated or “placebo-ed” in any way.
Wellness was an Oprah Book Club pick, and in an interview with Oprah’s organization, author Nathan Hill explained his take on wellness:
Around 2014, on an annual trip with a group of friends, Hill noticed a dramatic change in their conversation. “Whereas in our 20s, we talked mostly about books, now in our 30s, we talked mostly about health,” he observed. “Someone was doing interval training at varying intensities. Someone was now making pasta out of zucchini instead of flour (reason: fewer carbs). Someone else was removing the chewy centers of bagels (also carbs). Someone was now making mashed cauliflower instead of mashed potatoes (ditto, carbs).” Hill was baffled by this development until he recognized that this “surge in self-care had coincided with a retreat in empathy.” If you can’t count on others to take care of you, taking care of yourself becomes a very rational priority. “I started writing a story exploring this tension,” the author explains, “which, many years later, and after many twists and turns, became Wellness.”
Another “wellness” theme Hill explores is how our online activity can deplete our well-being. This plotline focuses on Jack’s estranged father, who joined Facebook and “sort of” reconnected with Jack there. His dad gets pulled down some conspiracy-theory rabbit holes and there is a large section of the book that picks apart how the algorithm rewards or punishes him via likes and engagement. This section may make a reader want to deactivate all of their social accounts; the messaging and level of control are detailed, scary, and heartbreaking.
Wellness the book, and all the ways it looks at “wellness,” caused me to have a (very) overdue library loan because I didn’t want to part with the words, and I liked having them near to revisit. When a book makes you want to take notes on something profound about 50 separate times while reading, that’s a sign that it’s a rare gem. It’s also time to visit Hill’s other work now that I’ve discovered him; he’s brilliant. Read this one when you have time to think and savor.
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