Wellness

I just finished reading Wellness, by Nathan Hill, Oprah's book club pick for October. Here's a synopsos from Oprah Daily:

As Oprah describes, “It is a modern take on love, marriage, and society’s obsession on improving almost every aspect of our lives.” Leaping from the ’90s Chicago grunge scene to the Flint Hills of Kansas to the detox-dieting suburbs, Wellness tells the story of Jack and Elizabeth, two college students who fall in love at first sight and, over the years, see themselves and their world change in ways neither of them could have imagined. This is a love story like none other—one that continues long after “happily ever after,”and captures the full, complicated, occasionally hilarious, and always surprising path of a single relationship. Jack and Elizabeth must confront the ghosts of their past, the impossible projections of their future, and the ways technology can warp our view of ourselves and each other. “You’re about to be taken for an incredible ride,” said Oprah.

Here's the description on Amazon:

When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the gritty '90s Chicago art scene, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in the thriving underground scene with an appreciative kindred spirit. Fast-forward twenty years to suburban married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter the often-baffling pursuits of health and happiness from polyamorous would-be suitors to home-renovation hysteria.

For the first time, Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize each other, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to 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.

Wellness was mostly a riveting story, except when now and then the author went on a pages-long rant about some minutia of life that in my estimation could have been edited down or away. But don't let that dissuade you from considering reading it. These chapters are packed with wry contemporary wisdom, aha moments of self-recognition, cautionary life lessons and entertaining situational comedy. You will root for this couple and be inspired to lighten up on your parenting and to make your domestic partnership more spontaneous and loving.

"And the only thing she was certain of was this: that between ourselves and the world are a million stories, and if we don't know which among them are true, we might as well try out those that are most humane, most generous, most beautiful, most loving."

Hardcover 624 pages, Audiobook 19 hours

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