This Is Great Now I am Questioning Everything: Wellness by Nathan Hill

Honestly, I’m just a little bit speechless.

One voice in my head is telling me to give this review a few days — to, in one of the character’s words — let it breathe. On the other hand, I’m in a hurry to tell as many people as possible as quickly as possible how good Nathan Hill’s “Wellness” is.

If you are familiar with Hill thanks to his debut effort, “The Nix,” I would say this is equally good if not better. I think people went one of two directions with “The Nix,” either loving it or hating it — and I loved it. But I think I love this, his most recent, even more. There are many reasons for this which may or may not track with another reader’s experience, but I’ll say this: It struck a nerve.

With “Wellness,” readers are invited into the world of Elizabeth and Jack in the most romantic of ways, their origin story. Their love story is lyrical in quality, eyes meeting across a crowded 90s era Chicago bar scene, recognizing each other as their apartment window crush they’ve been pining for ages over. Love is instantaneous. Love is real.

So it’s unnerving to fast forward into the latter half of the 2000s only to find out, maybe not so much. Elizabeth and Jack and their young son Toby are trying to navigate the ins and outs of family expectations and contemplating a move to Chicago’s North Shore. Because, that’s what families do, right? It’s just the next step in their evolution.

This move has Jack and Elizabeth questioning everything, straight to the core of their togetherness. There are plot twists that will throw readers for a curve, and more than a handful of both “A ha” and “Oh no” moments that propel you forward through the novel. Hill crafts deep, emotionally painful familial backstories for both these main characters that so throughly explain exactly how they became how they are — damaged souls both searching for certainty that will never be guaranteed.

As an aside to the main plot, if you’ve ever wondered exactly how it is that some people fall hook, line and sinker for some of the most outrageous BS out there on the internet, then you can skip straight to Hill’s explanation of the various algorithms that wrought havoc on Jack’s father, Lawrence. It’s insidious. I mean, I have always known, but this really was one of the best dramatizations of exactly how they work. Goodness.

And then there’s Elizabeth and Toby’s relationship —she wants so very badly to do all the right things when as any parents with their child rearing in the rearview mirror can tell you, we know this can’t happen. I mean, when Toby explains how he approached Elizabeth’s popover test? My mommy soul died just a little bit.

I am desperate for a friend to read this so we can debate who wins the title of “Most Loathsome” … is it Jack’s mother? Their condo developer Ben? Elizabeth’s friend Brandie? Or Jack’s CFO at the school where he teaches, who insist your career’s worthiness can be determined by a social media score? I will not rest until someone options this and gives me this limited series starring Pedro Pascal and Kathryn Hahn. This cast of characters Hill has created just feels so entirely real. Everyone knows them. Trust me on this.

“Wellness” would make for a fabulous book club read, and not just because Oprah said so late last year. It is long, but well worth the time investment. I don’t do a lot of underlining when I read, but Hill’s prose is such that I want to memorize it. So I’ll end with some of the truest words spoken … “Believe what you believe, my dear, but believe gently. Believe compassionately. Believe with curiosity. Believe with humility. And don’t trust the arrogance of certainty.”