"Wellness" by Nathan Hill

When I read Nathan Hill's earlier book, The Nix, it often made me laugh out loud -- at least the first 2/3 of it did. Hill’s new book, Wellness, is pretty good, but not laugh-out-loud good. In this review, I can save you from almost 700 pages of disappointment.

The larger-than-life funny characters of Hill’s first book are replaced in Wellness by much more serious characters. Occasionally there’s a shred of humor, but not enough. Many of the themes are the same in both books, but Wellness is a book with a long scholarly bibliography, meaning it’s trying to explore in fiction what social science and psych researchers do with experiments on human subjects. Further, there are many passages where descriptions and narratives are WAY too long for what they contribute to the book. In The Nix, computers and the internet are funny. Here they are explained to death. (Wellness needs editing!) 

Even when it comes to food, satiric depictions of characters with food fixations work well in The Nix, but to me fall kind of flat in Wellness. Here’s an example of a passage that I find less-funny in Wellness, and what I find a more funny passage from The Nix:

From Wellness: “When Jack first met him, Benjamin had the gaunt, pale, sunken look of devoted malnourishment and vitamin-indifference. Now he was rugged, ripped, a man who ran half-marathons and did Tough Mudders, who led meditation classes every morning out of this very office, who was fanatical about ingesting only organic and natural and authentic foods and supplements, refusing to put in his body anything that was in any way processed or manufactured or artificial or advertised or publicized. It was like his college-era antiestablishment stance had, over the years, radically narrowed, and now pertained strictly in the area of his diet. His skin had the enameled quality of inveterate moisturization.” (Wellness, p. 60)

From The Nix: “See, what's important for me is to be frugal. I'm saving up. Do you know how expensive that organic health food stuff is? A sandwich is seventy-nine cents at the gas station but like ten bucks at the farmer's market. Do you know how cheap, on a per-calorie basis, nachos are? Not to mention the Go-Go Taquitos or Pancake and Sausage To-Go Sticks or other food that have no organic equivalent that I get for free at the 7-Eleven down the street. ... Of course eating these food items is not what I might describe as pleasant, since they're tough and scorched and moistureless from their all-day cooking on high-temperature rollers. Sometimes biting through a burrito's thick tortilla casing can feel like chewing through your own toe calluses." (The Nix, p. 224) 

Maybe read this instead!

Although the author tries at times to keep it light, the result in Wellness is a pretty ponderous book…so in sum I don’t recommend reading it, but if you missed The Nix, you might like it.

Review © 2023 mae sander