Nathan Hill’s second novel is a modern day love story-sort of. Elizabeth is from a wealthy, immoral New England family. She leaves them forever to attend college at DePaul in Chicago. Jack has a punitive, lonely childhood in rural Kansas. He too moves to Chicago to escape his past. Jack is a photographer and Elizabeth works at a lab that studies the placebo effect. Although they are very different in background, interests and personalities, they fall in love, eventually marry, and have a child, Toby, who is more involved with Minecraft than the real world.

Wellness is clever and entertaining, but it is not an easy read. It’s Jack and Elizabeth’s story, but it is also a critique on the flaws in our 21st century world, described in much detail-sometimes too much detail.