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.

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.