WELLNESS, a truly moving, involving, deeply-felt trip inside Commitment with a capital "C"

WELLNESS
NATHAN HILL
Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$13.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A witty and poignant novel about marriage, middle age, 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 alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter cults disguised as mindfulness support groups, polyamorous would-be suitors, Facebook wars, and something called Love Potion Number Nine. For the first time Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize one another, 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.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The struggles that all who form, and sustain, the heavy bonds of matrimony are everfreen plots because most of us have some experience of them. It doesn't matter how much you love each other, it matters how committed you each are to the friendship you share with your chosen partner. Love ebbs and flows, common interests wax and wane, people grow and change, and what makes couple-stories so endlessly interesting is how they are shown managing...or not...these deeply familiar challenges.

It is absolutely clear to me that Author Hill, in his second novel after the startlingly assured The Nix, has honed his craft to a sharp edge. He doesn't shy away from the difficult or the painful parts of commitment. The hateful, hurtful things people say when they are in a deeply enmeshed relationship are both unique and common. There is a certain kind of dynamic in US couples of different socioeconomic backgrounds that's central to this book. We are taught that ours is a classless society, but it is not. The wealth of one family is always a weapon in the couplehood of one its members; a more effective one when the other partner is not from equal wealth.

That bludgeon goes both ways, of course. After a child is born, dynamics change, often for the worse, as incompatible parenting goals are a major cause of divorce. In this story, the couple...a daughter of wealth and privilege, a psychologist, and a deeply wounded soul who feels shackled and devalued by her working class artist husband...are twenty years into a commitment neither can remember why they made.

It absolutely does NOT help that they're living in a surveillance-capitalist society that valorizes getting and spending, when neither has a set of core values instilled from solid bases in love to resist these relentless pressures. It is obvious Author Hill has little use for facile patching-up life hacks or quick-fix lifestyle gurus. He dedicates a lot of space to social media's machiavellian algorithm driven effects. (Coulda been less for all of me, but hey...) The thesis is, however, what good is hacking or fixing stuff too fragile and hollow to last? Your old marriage is not delivering the same thrills...move on, get something new and better.

Right?

Not necessarily. Not even desirably. Open your mind to the possibility that just maybe your life doesn't need to be fixed. Maybe instead your relationship to your life needs to be recalibrated, reassessed, revalued. This being a message I resonate with, I found the read compelling and involving.

Does learning to make the best of it mean settling? Mean getting less out of life? Or is it instead the way to find deeper, more important ways of being who you are inside this long-term commitment to yourself, and your partner, to be well and truly together?

Wellness is that endlessly relatable journey, set in a time where even asking that kind of question isn't encouraged by anything around us. Anyone in a couple, past or presnt, ongoing or ending, will find a lot of deeply interesting details to muse over. A lot of richly textured background to admire, even envy. A lot of deep and scary emotions to batten on from the safe remove of fiction.

I'd rate this the full five of five were it not for what felt to me like the author's rather-too-evident need to overshare. A funny thing to say in a review of a novel about intimacy, I know, but I'm left a bit overfamiliar wuth his opionons of the self-help/new-age/quick-fixery. A couple times, okay; after a while, what is this really about, Author Hill?

I'm highly recommending this read for all partners in a long-term relationship to load onto the /kindle this #Booksgiving. It is manna from heaven to feel seen in stressful times; family "Togetherness" is rough any time, but now...? Bring some independent comfort with you this Yule.