It is with great pleasure I now know of yet another wonderful writer and storyteller, Nathan Hill. This is the first book of his that I have come across (Wellness is Hill’s 2nd novel), and after this, I fully intend to read his debut novel, The Nix. Both novels are in the 600-page range, because Hill’s writing is not the kind that celebrates brevity, and rather loops back and forth, even containing some repetitions, probably intentionally. But it is not a weakness in the writing; instead, it is just how humans communicate naturally, how stories are told and established, discursively, non-linearly, patchwork fashion.
The story starts with 2 college kids, Jack and Elizabeth, who both escaped difficult childhoods and families, to go to Chicago and seek out freedom in the arts scene. They happen to live in buildings on opposite sites of a narrow alley, on the same floors, and could see into each other’s windows. They develop a crush mutually. They become soul mates at once, and the next episode, they are 20 years in their relationship, have a young son, have used their only nest egg to put down a down payment on a building that is being built, to be their forever home. Their marriage is also on the rocks. The novel is told painting in the picture about Jack and Elizabeth’s past before each other, and also during their long relationship. The telling is wonderful, so easy to read, so engaging, and well paced.
There are all kinds of interesting issues raised in this novel, quite apart from romance. Family of course is a big topic, but so is placebos and its place in human psychology and healing. The first job Elizabeth lands is with the Wellness Institute, she is working for Professor Sanborne, where
her basic responsibility was to engage in intimate and revealing conversations with random guys to see which of those guys fell in love with her (p529).
Elizabeth would interview volunteers (“all college-aged, heterosexual, single, who on their intake forms, expressed a strong interest in dating” (ibid)), and from a Sanborne’s hundred probing questions whittled down to 10 and in a very specific order, Elizabeth would pose these questions to the volunteers. The first 2 questions are designed to
drill under people’s adult defences and expose their more innocent and vulnerable and unprotected previous little tiny selves (p531)
with the idea that after priming them to feel vulnerable, the next questions would
trigger feelings of anxiety and embarrassment and shame and even dread (ibid)
the purpose being to get hearts racing and to get the guys sweating and anxious. The premise is that emotions or feelings are only a conceptual category, associated with physical experiences such as feeling hot or trembly, and so exploiting causality, in a chicken and egg manner, just as if one’s palms sweat, a person may conclude, I must be anxious, so
if Elizabeth could get her partners feeling nervous via highly intimate and revealing questions, the guys may misattribute these nerves, telling themselves, essentially, ‘I must be really attracted to this girl if I’m feeling so nervous around her’” (p532-3).
Elizabeth had used this technique on Jack the first night they met, whereas Jack is a romantic and feels they were destined for each other.
After Professor Sanbourne retired, Elizabeth took over from him at Wellness, developing the placebo:
placebo: it was a story that changed your brain chemistry […] creating fictive experiences that produced real physical and psychological responses.. […] you could give someone a synthetic opioid, or you could give them a placebo so compelling that it prompted the brain to release it own natural opioid […] Wellness had a success rate at treating chronic pain that rivaled at of real medicine. Ditto fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, depression” (p370).
Elizabeth was once asked by United Airlines to help design how they can make people happy to be deprived of more and more privileges – and she comes up with a solution, which resulted in that precious nest egg, which enabled them to be property owners for the first time.
The issues begin when protests stop the building, and Jack and Elizabeth are at risk of losing their entire investment. Toby, their son, is also causing them many worries, and Jack and Elizabeth try to work through their relationship, having grown apart from each other, from being so in love they were practically joined at the hip, to Elizabeth wanting separate master bedrooms in the newly built forever home. The novel plays out this story with a good cast of characters, both from their present and pasts.
Incredibly readable. I can’t wait for Nathan Hill to released a 3rd novel!
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