Our Take

Nathan Hill's follow up to The Nix trades sprawling political satire for something quieter and arguably more devastating: the slow erosion and unexpected resilience of a long marriage. What makes Wellness so compelling is how precisely Hill diagnoses the modern hunger for self-optimization, whether through open relationships, psychedelics, or algorithm-fed nostalgia, without ever mocking his characters for wanting to feel whole. Jack and Elizabeth's romance begins in scrappy, bohemian 1990s Chicago and calcifies into something more complicated once mortgages, parenthood, and middle age arrive. Readers who loved the generational sweep and wry social commentary of Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner or the marriage-under-a-microscope intimacy of Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff will find familiar pleasures here, though Hill's prose has its own restless, essayistic energy, veering into science, internet culture, and neuroscience with the same curiosity that made The Nix such a memorable debut. Fans of Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen will also appreciate the way domestic drama becomes a lens for something larger. This is a big, ambitious novel for readers who want their love stories complicated by real ideas: readers of substantial literary fiction who don't mind a book that takes its time earning its insights about what love actually requires once the infatuation fades.