A review by jenferlizbeth
Wellness by Nathan Hill

4.0

I loved The Nix, so was looking forward to reading this one. Much like The Nix, the characters’ present experiences are very much intertwined with and enriched by understanding their pasts. It is a beautiful and thought-provoking story that is ultimately about the inner lives we all have and unconscious behavioral motivations that are informed by lived experience. The ending is extremely well done, connecting all the dots while leaving space for the reader’s interpretation of the conclusion, and I found myself forgiving the novel’s flaws as I came to the end. The main thing that knocks my rating down is that there is a fair amount of extraneous fluff that detracted from the story for me and took me out of the novel. There are some instances where passages are repetitive, and, namely, the 40+ pages on the innerworkings of facebook and search algorithms, I found tiresome and largely skimmed for the human elements that Hill writes so well. I will likely be thinking about this story over the next few days/weeks.