The best – BEST – book I have read in awhile. This novel deserves all the awards, and I’m not only saying that because I lived in Chicago-land, where the novel is set, but because the story and the story-telling is so amazingly delivered. To borrow a phrase from Spinal Tap‘s Nigel Tufnel, “this one goes to 11.”
Wellness revolves around the romance, marriage, demise of said-romance, and self-discovery of a couple, Jack and Elizabeth. Their 9-year old son, neighbors, old friends, and parents also play — as to be expected — significant roles in this account of their mid-life crisis. It’s a mundane and perhaps all-too-familiar tale of life lived and regretted, of the parts of ourselves we lose along the way. This is the draw of the book; it is immensely relatable — at least for those of us of a certain age. There are bits of Jack and Elizabeth in us all, and for those of us who parents, the novel highlights the agony of parenting, especially as mother.
It’s the story of what you do when life doesn’t seem to have delivered what you promised yourself, and — as the novel progresses — it’s the story of why that happened.
At 600+ pages, this is a doorstopper of a novel, but Hill’s prose is so smooth, the story so compelling, the characters so intriguing, that I finished the book in about a week, roughly a hundred a pages a night. A feat given that I read this book during and just after Finals Week of the semester when I had to knuckle down and grade.
And Hill is hilarious. Several parts and dialogue made me laugh out loud; not only could I see myself at the Metro (been there, yes) and some of the other places where Jack and Elizabeth lived out their romance, but Hill allowed me to laugh at myself and my past a little bit. Readers of my generation are likely to find some humor in the pretentiousness of our younger selves in this. I did, and loved the confrontational reflection I had with myself afterwards.
The book will date you and itself, but I think it’s destined to be a classic of our moment.
Dr JoAnn LoSavio 