Nathan Hill's 'Wellness' examines marriage, parenthood and polyamory

NPR's Book of the Day

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2023

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nathan Hill's novel Wellness starts with a blossoming romance between two artists in Chicago's underground scene. Twenty years later, they're married, raising a kid, and running into all sorts of conflict, within themselves and with one another. In today's episode, Hill speaks with Here & Now's Robin Young about how love and partnership changes over time, and how the start of the book – which he wrote two decades ago – felt much different when he reapproached it in his 40s.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. I'm not sure what it says about us,
0:08.0	but my wife and I love stories about marriages falling apart. You know, bonus points if it's
0:14.9	about the couple, getting kind of jaded and disillusioned as they have kids and move into the
0:19.3	burbs and all that. Like a couple of years into our relationship, we read Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates together.
0:26.8	And it was great. I think we still have multiple copies floating around the house somewhere.
0:31.6	Anyway, today's book is similarly up that alley.
0:34.3	It's by Nathan Hill, and it's called Wellness.
0:37.1	It's getting lots of buzz and great reviews and all that. It's by Nathan Hill, and it's called Wellness. It's getting lots of buzz and
0:38.2	great reviews and all that. It's about a marriage that's changing, sure, but it's also about a lot of
0:43.9	other things that speak to our current malaise. And in this interview with here and as Robin Young,
0:49.0	right after the book, got some major props from Oprah. There's an interesting moment where he calls the marriage
0:55.5	story a container that can help address all these other things going on in the world.
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1:41.3	Today, big moment. Oprah Winfrey unveiled her latest book club pick. It is Nathan Hill's new novel, Wellness. We concur. In fact, we just spoke of him before the announcement. His 2016 novel, The Nix, drew comparisons to authors of massive works like David Foster Wallace and Dickens. In The Nix, he covers online gaming, Norwegian mythology, the Occupy Wall Street protests.
2:06.0	His new equally sprawling novel, Wellness, covers Kansas Prairie Fires, the Chicago art scene.
	...

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