Wellness
A novel
(Sprache: Englisch)
Moving from the gritty '90s Chicago art scene to a suburbia of detox diets and home-renovation hysteria, this reimagined love story follows a married couple from their dream-filled youths to an adult life of familial dysfunction.
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Moving from the gritty '90s Chicago art scene to a suburbia of detox diets and home-renovation hysteria, this reimagined love story follows a married couple from their dream-filled youths to an adult life of familial dysfunction.Lese-Probe zu „Wellness “
Come WithHe lives alone on the fourth floor of an old brick building with no view of the sky. When he looks out his window, all he can see is her window across the alley, an arm s length away, where she lives alone on the fourth floor of her own old building. They don t know each other s names. They have never spoken. It is winter in Chicago.
Barely any light enters the narrow alley between them, and barely any rain either, or snow or sleet or fog or that crackling wet January stuff the locals call wintry mix. The alley is dark and still and without weather. It seems to have no atmosphere at all, a hollow stitched into the city for the singular purpose of separating things from things, like outer space.
She first appeared to him on Christmas Eve. He d gone to bed early that night feeling horribly sorry for himself the only soul in his whole raucous building with nowhere else to be when a light snapped on across the alley, and a small warm glow replaced his window s usual yawning dark. He sat up, walked to the window, peeked out. There she was, a flurry of movement, arranging, unpacking, pulling small vibrant dresses from large matching suitcases. Her window was so close to him, and she was so close to him their apartments separated by the distance of a single ambitious jump that he scooted back a few feet to more fully submerge himself in his darkness. He sat there on his heels and stared for a short while, until the staring felt improper and indecent and he contritely returned to bed. But he has, in the weeks since, come back to the theater of this window, and more often than he d like to admit. He sometimes sits here, hidden, and, for a few minutes at a time, he watches.
To say that he finds her beautiful is too simple. Of course he finds her beautiful objectively, classically, obviously beautiful. Even just the way she walks with a kind of buoyancy, a cheerful jaunty bounce has him thoroughly charmed. She glides across the floor of her
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apartment in thick socks, occasionally doing an impromptu twirl, the skirt of her dress billowing briefly around her. In this drab and filthy place, she prefers dresses bright flowered sundresses incongruous amid the grit of this neighborhood, the cold of this winter. She tucks her legs under them as she sits in her plush velvet armchair, a few candles glowing nearby, her face impassive and cool, holding a book in one hand, the other hand idly tracing the lip of a wineglass. He watches her touch that glass and wonders how a little fingertip can inspire such a large torment.
Her apartment is decorated with postcards from places he assumes she s been Paris, Venice, Barcelona, Rome and framed posters of art he assumes she s seen in person: the statue of David, the Pietà, The Last Supper, Guernica. Her tastes are manifold and intimidating; meanwhile, he s never even seen an ocean.
She reads inordinately, at all hours, flicking on her yellow bedside lamp at two o clock in the morning to page through large and unwieldy textbooks biology, neurology, psychology, microeconomics or various stage plays, or collections of poetry, or thick histories of wars and empires, or scientific journals with inscrutable names and bland gray bindings. She listens to music he assumes is classical for the way her head sways to it. He strains to identify book jackets and album covers, then rushes to the public library the next day to read all the authors that rouse and unsleep her, and listen to all the symphonies she seems to have on repeat: the Haffner, the Eroica, the New World, the Unfinished, the Fantastique. He imagines that if they ever actually speak, he will drop some morsel of Symphonie Fantastique knowledge and she will be impressed with
Her apartment is decorated with postcards from places he assumes she s been Paris, Venice, Barcelona, Rome and framed posters of art he assumes she s seen in person: the statue of David, the Pietà, The Last Supper, Guernica. Her tastes are manifold and intimidating; meanwhile, he s never even seen an ocean.
She reads inordinately, at all hours, flicking on her yellow bedside lamp at two o clock in the morning to page through large and unwieldy textbooks biology, neurology, psychology, microeconomics or various stage plays, or collections of poetry, or thick histories of wars and empires, or scientific journals with inscrutable names and bland gray bindings. She listens to music he assumes is classical for the way her head sways to it. He strains to identify book jackets and album covers, then rushes to the public library the next day to read all the authors that rouse and unsleep her, and listen to all the symphonies she seems to have on repeat: the Haffner, the Eroica, the New World, the Unfinished, the Fantastique. He imagines that if they ever actually speak, he will drop some morsel of Symphonie Fantastique knowledge and she will be impressed with
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Autoren-Porträt von Nathan Hill
Nathan Hill
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Nathan Hill
- 2023, Internationale Ausgabe, 624 Seiten, 8 Abbildungen, Maße: 16 x 23,2 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: KNOPF
- ISBN-10: 1524712582
- ISBN-13: 9781524712587
- Erscheinungsdatum: 21.09.2023
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
A modern take on love, marriage, and society s obsession on improving almost every aspect of our lives and the impact technology and social media has on our culture and in our lives. This brilliant novel will leave you thinking about the truth of your own life and the stories we tell ourselves and each other. Oprah Winfrey"Gorgeous . . . Wellness has an insistent pull . . . The beauty of Hill s second novel is that every character is at least a little strange and no one is unworthy of sympathy . . . Few recent novels harbor as much love for humanity as this one does." The Washington Post
Wellness is a perfect novel for our age . . . Hill is an immensely talented writer; he has a gift for prose that's elegant but unshowy, and his dialogue consistently rings true-to-life . . . a stunning novel about the stories that we tell about our lives and our loves, and how we sustain relationships throughout time it's beyond remarkable, both funny and heartbreaking, sometimes on the same page. NPR
"Lovely . . . Hill's storytelling abilities are impressive . . . his novels vividly capture lonely Midwestern childhoods and real yearning for connection and understanding." The New York Times
I read Hill s novel with excitement and close to a sense of disbelief that there is still a writer out there who is intrigued by amplitude and by what fiction can do if pushed far enough. Daphne Merkin, The Atlantic
"Hill is witty at exposing the ways intelligence and social background don t necessarily make us more immune to manipulation . . . [Wellness] masterfully withholds information about crucial plot points, suggesting that moments of seeming happenstance almost always involve somebody s thumb on the scale." The Los Angeles Times
Wellness brilliantly blends ideas about wellness culture, modern parenting, Internet algorithms, gentrification, and most importantly, love. People
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A hilarious and moving exploration of a modern marriage that astounds in its breadth and intimacy. Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half
Wellness is such a beautiful, sometimes sad, sometimes satirical but most of all honest book about the many people a person becomes the way a life, in time, inevitably upends itself. A love story of dislodged chronology, Nathan Hill s brilliant interrogation of a single relationship spiderwebs out into almost every facet of our contemporary anxieties. Few writers working today have dissected, with such a sharp scalpel, the fundamental paradox of modern American life: this hopelessly broken need to fix what may not need fixing, to reach with utter desperation for a version of better that may not be better at all. Read Wellness with caution: it lays so much of our little self-deceptions bare. Omar El Akkad, author of American War
Nathan Hill has synthesized about a hundred years of that distinctly American delusion called self-improvement, and Wellness is the whip smart and gently comic result. Epic in scope, domestic in scale, it s a book that defies anyone to read it and willingly pick up a dumbbell or worry about counting steps ever again. Hill has released you, America, and his book will leave you not only fortified but amazed. Joshua Ferris, author of Then We Came to the End
Wellness is one of the funniest, saddest, smartest novels I ve ever read. In his portrait of one foundering marriage, Nathan Hill has encapsulated the pathologies and possibilities of our troubled era. With his razor-sharp satire and heartbreaking pathos, his stylistic virtuosity and human warmth, Hill has written both a propulsive page-turner and an artistic achievement of the highest order. I didn t think I could love a book more than The Nix until I read Wellness. It's a flat-out masterpiece." Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Ambitious, deeply engrossing, whip-smart and ultimately heartbreaking, Nathan Hill s Wellness is all this and much more. Richard Russo, author of the North Bath Trilogy
Astutely observed, hilariously satirical . . . Hill s prose is radiant and ravishing throughout this saturated, intricately honeycombed novel of delving cogitation as he evokes the wonders of the prairie and the city, and the ever-perplexing folly, anguish, and beauty of the human condition. Booklist (starred review)
Hill blends a family chronicle with cultural critique in his expansive and surprisingly tender latest . . . This stunning novel of ideas never loses sight of its humanity. Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Warmhearted . . . A bittersweet novel of love gained, lost, and regained over the course of decades. Kirkus Reviews
Wellness is such a beautiful, sometimes sad, sometimes satirical but most of all honest book about the many people a person becomes the way a life, in time, inevitably upends itself. A love story of dislodged chronology, Nathan Hill s brilliant interrogation of a single relationship spiderwebs out into almost every facet of our contemporary anxieties. Few writers working today have dissected, with such a sharp scalpel, the fundamental paradox of modern American life: this hopelessly broken need to fix what may not need fixing, to reach with utter desperation for a version of better that may not be better at all. Read Wellness with caution: it lays so much of our little self-deceptions bare. Omar El Akkad, author of American War
Nathan Hill has synthesized about a hundred years of that distinctly American delusion called self-improvement, and Wellness is the whip smart and gently comic result. Epic in scope, domestic in scale, it s a book that defies anyone to read it and willingly pick up a dumbbell or worry about counting steps ever again. Hill has released you, America, and his book will leave you not only fortified but amazed. Joshua Ferris, author of Then We Came to the End
Wellness is one of the funniest, saddest, smartest novels I ve ever read. In his portrait of one foundering marriage, Nathan Hill has encapsulated the pathologies and possibilities of our troubled era. With his razor-sharp satire and heartbreaking pathos, his stylistic virtuosity and human warmth, Hill has written both a propulsive page-turner and an artistic achievement of the highest order. I didn t think I could love a book more than The Nix until I read Wellness. It's a flat-out masterpiece." Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Ambitious, deeply engrossing, whip-smart and ultimately heartbreaking, Nathan Hill s Wellness is all this and much more. Richard Russo, author of the North Bath Trilogy
Astutely observed, hilariously satirical . . . Hill s prose is radiant and ravishing throughout this saturated, intricately honeycombed novel of delving cogitation as he evokes the wonders of the prairie and the city, and the ever-perplexing folly, anguish, and beauty of the human condition. Booklist (starred review)
Hill blends a family chronicle with cultural critique in his expansive and surprisingly tender latest . . . This stunning novel of ideas never loses sight of its humanity. Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Warmhearted . . . A bittersweet novel of love gained, lost, and regained over the course of decades. Kirkus Reviews
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