'American storytelling at its era-spanning best . . . An immersive, multi-layered portrait of a marriage, Nathan Hill’s follow-up to The Nix is a work of quiet genius.' – The Observer
'The incredible scope of this dazzlingly detailed state-of-the-nation satire almost defies description . . . Brilliant doesn���t begin to describe it, but I’ll say it anyway.' – Daily Mail
'I doubt I'll enjoy many books this year as much as Wellness.' – The Times/Sunday Times, 'Books of the Year (So Far)'
An Oprah's Book Club Pick.
A powerfully affecting novel about how we change, grow and age, Wellness is a story of marriage, middle age, our tech-obsessed health culture, and the bonds that keep people together.
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 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.
Moving from the gritty 90s Chicago art scene to a suburbia of detox diets and home renovation hysteria, Wellness mines the absurdities of modern technology and modern love to reveal profound, startling truths about intimacy and connection. In this follow-up to Nathan Hill’s electric debut The Nix, Wellness reimagines the love story with healthy doses of insight, irony and heart.
Genre: Literary Fiction
'The incredible scope of this dazzlingly detailed state-of-the-nation satire almost defies description . . . Brilliant doesn���t begin to describe it, but I’ll say it anyway.' – Daily Mail
'I doubt I'll enjoy many books this year as much as Wellness.' – The Times/Sunday Times, 'Books of the Year (So Far)'
An Oprah's Book Club Pick.
A powerfully affecting novel about how we change, grow and age, Wellness is a story of marriage, middle age, our tech-obsessed health culture, and the bonds that keep people together.
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 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.
Moving from the gritty 90s Chicago art scene to a suburbia of detox diets and home renovation hysteria, Wellness mines the absurdities of modern technology and modern love to reveal profound, startling truths about intimacy and connection. In this follow-up to Nathan Hill’s electric debut The Nix, Wellness reimagines the love story with healthy doses of insight, irony and heart.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Wellness is such a beautiful, sometimes sad, sometimes satirical but most of all honest book about the many people a person becomes - the way a life, in time, inevitably upends itself. A love story of dislodged chronology, Nathan Hill's brilliant interrogation of a single relationship spiderwebs out into almost every facet of our contemporary anxieties. Few writers working today have dissected, with such a sharp scalpel, the fundamental paradox of modern American life: this hopelessly broken need to fix what may not need fixing, to reach with utter desperation for a version of better that may not be better at all. Read Wellness with caution: it lays so much of our little self-deceptions bare." - Omar El Akkad
"A hilarious and moving exploration of a modern marriage that astounds in its breadth and intimacy." - Brit Bennett
"Nathan Hill has synthesized about a hundred years of that distinctly American delusion called self-improvement, and Wellness is the whip smart and gently comic result. Epic in scope, domestic in scale, it's a book that defies anyone to read it and willingly pick up a dumbbell or worry about counting steps ever again. Hill has released you, America, and his book will leave you not only fortified but amazed." - Joshua Ferris
"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." - Anthony Marra
"Ambitious, deeply engrossing, whip-smart and ultimately heartbreaking, Nathan Hill's Wellness is all this and much more." - Richard Russo
"A hilarious and moving exploration of a modern marriage that astounds in its breadth and intimacy." - Brit Bennett
"Nathan Hill has synthesized about a hundred years of that distinctly American delusion called self-improvement, and Wellness is the whip smart and gently comic result. Epic in scope, domestic in scale, it's a book that defies anyone to read it and willingly pick up a dumbbell or worry about counting steps ever again. Hill has released you, America, and his book will leave you not only fortified but amazed." - Joshua Ferris
"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." - Anthony Marra
"Ambitious, deeply engrossing, whip-smart and ultimately heartbreaking, Nathan Hill's Wellness is all this and much more." - Richard Russo
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