BookBrowse Reviews Wellness by Nathan Hill

Nathan Hill's second novel, Wellness, follows Jack and Elizabeth, an ambivalent and disillusioned married couple in their late thirties. The two met in Chicago in 1993; they were eighteen years old and lived in pre-gentrified Wicker Park, where Jack took photographs of the neighborhood's indie rock scene and Elizabeth, a freshman in college, was voraciously studying "the whole human condition." Now, in 2014, they're surprised by where their paths have led them: Jack is an adjunct photography professor, Elizabeth runs a grifter behavioral psychology company, and they're preparing for a move to the suburbs. Somewhere along the line, bit by bit, they sold out.

The novel's title refers to the name of Elizabeth's company, but it's also a promise of critique, a sendup of reality in 2014, especially compared to the optimistic counterculture and nascent internet of the '90s. Hill starts out ...