Did Generation X sell out? This is one of the key questions Nathan Hill explores in his sophomore novel, Wellness. Wellness is a long read into what is a very thorough telling of a story that confronts its own complexity head-on throughout.

Spoilers ahead

Wellness focuses on the relationship between Jack and Elizabeth, a pair who met in the early 1990s in Chicago. Both Jack and Elizabeth fondly recall how they fell madly in love soon after they first met, although Jack is more dedicated to their “love at first sight” story. Elizabeth, on the other hand, questions this narrative multiple times throughout the novel, recollecting in detail how she fell out of love with the idea of being in love with Jack in 2008 when her husband failed to understand, and acknowledge, her struggle attempting to perform the “perfect parent” role. By the 2010s, Jack and Elizabeth have been married for years and they share a son, but their differences, which have always existed, have ultimately led them, at this point, down different paths. Jack is still teaching college courses on photography and creating examples of the same type of art while Elizabeth runs a successful alternative treatment shop/center. Their former intimacy, it seems, has run its course, and they are slowly working through a move into a customized, trendy high-rise apartment–exactly the kind of place that both of their younger selves would have scoffed at as inauthentic, sanitized, and gentrified.

This novel moves back and forth between a variety of significant points in time. At first, the primary divide in the novel is established between the early days of their relationship in the 1990s and the “present day” in the 2010s. But, the novel does expand well beyond this dichotomy, incorporating flashbacks to other important scenes throughout their history, both as a couple and individually. Beginning around the middle of the novel, the action shifts backwards to Jack’s and Elizabeth’s respective childhoods. The reader discovers that while Jack and Elizabeth are presented with opposing character traits, their early lives are undeniably similar. Both of them grow up in challenging homes with at least one narcissistic parent, and many of their instinctive actions and responses are echoes of the coping techniques they both developed in these respective environments. These detailed vignettes hint that if Jack and Elizabeth were to forget about their “love at first sight” narrative and, instead, focus on the experiences and traits they truly do share, their relationship will regain its intimacy and strength.

There is a lot to like about this novel. The author’s writing style is very engaging–Hill can write long descriptions and brief dialogue in an equally enjoyable way for the reader. He also has remarkable descriptive skill. He is capable of describing a person or an event exactly as he would have his readers understand it. A good example is Brandie, a young mother Elizabeth begins to associate with to help her son participate in more social situations with other children. We all know a “Brandie”–her perfectly photoshopped images celebrating her remarkable life and perfect marriage pop up relentlessly in our Instagram news feeds. She believes that if she simply exudes positivity and focuses on the things she wants–and the way she wants them–she will achieve all of her goals. The people around her either contribute to the narrative of the moment or they don’t, and if they don’t, they are summarily cut out of the picture. Modern social media, and a shift in the kinds of values Hill emphasizes as part of 1990s culture, has created an army of “Brandies,” a figure many Generation Xers love to hate. Hill does an excellent job infusing this minor character with all of the personal qualities and beliefs that make Brandie a recognizable, realistic character. At the same time, he also ensures that the very existence of a Brandie calls into question where the anti-sell-out crowd might have gone wrong after the 1990s. Another highlight is Hill’s retelling of Jack’s and Elizabeth’s respective childhoods–the vignettes he includes are very vividly retold, almost a slight exaggeration of what really must have happened in the past. I think that Hill does a slightly better job retelling Jack’s childhood because Jack’s experiences more comfortably fit together to explain his adult life and behavior. But, the similarities between Jack’s and Elizabeth’s childhoods do establish a foundation upon which a reconciliation between the two characters, in a deeper way, just might be possible by the end of the novel.

The primary issue with this novel is it’s length–it simply did not need to be this long. Many passages are related in detail, but, however well-written the description may be, the reader is left wondering why they couldn’t have been related in a few sentences. A good example is Elizabeth’s family history, related as a series of biographies going back several generations. Hill is clearly attempting to link Elizbeth’s alternative medicine business to some of the less palatable business practices of her predecessors, but a few lines, or maybe a paragraph, discussing this would most certainly have made this point. Another example involves a seven-part description of Jack’s father, Lawrence, and his engagement with social media. Hill makes a tongue-in-cheek comment here about how people fall for misinformation campaigns via social media, and there are very good accents illuminating Jack’s relationship with him. But, this portion of the novel goes on, and on, and on about algorithms, and it handles Lawrence’s interactions on social media in way too much detail. Approximately 200 pages could have been excised from this book, and none of the core of the story or the progression Hill focuses on documenting would have been lost. Instead, Hill got in his own way, attempting to write a book he hoped would become the great Generation X novel–a simpler book would have certainly achieved this without forcing readers to struggle through sections of the text to get back to more significant, well-developed parts of this story.

Overall, this is a good book, and I recommend that readers go ahead and skip through parts that appear to be superfluous–you will miss nothing if you get the main idea and move on. As for this being the great Generation X novel, I think that view is misplaced. This novel does a very good job–the best job–telling Jack’s and Elizabeth’s story, but in focusing on these two people almost exclusively, the novel does not widen its perspective enough beyond them to comment on shifts between the 1990s and the 2010s. Jack and Elizabeth can either be made similar enough to each other to render their relationship meaningful OR representative of wider trends calling past values into question. It accomplishes the first goal extraordinarily well, but it misses out on the second–an outcome which was, likely, inevitable given the story Nathan Hill wanted most to tell.