With his new novel, Well-beingNathan Hill confirms the immense talent demonstrated in his first work, Ghosts of the Old Country (awarded in 2017 by the Folio-Télérama Booksellers Prize). He takes us on a formidable fresco of nearly 700 pages in which he analyzes the relationships of an American middle-class couple, from youth to maturity.
The novel begins at the dawn of the 1990s. Jack and Elizabeth, two penniless students, live in the middle of a deprived but trendy neighborhood in Chicago. Attracted to each other, they spy on each other from their apartment, since each sees the other's. They end up meeting for real at a punk concert: love at first sight.
Twenty years later, he is a temporary professor of photographic art at the university. She runs a psychology research organization. They are married and parents of little Toby, whose education, according to their progressive principles, proves difficult. The height of gentrification so reviled during their youth, they bought “their apartment for life” off plan.
The novel doesn't just tell their love story. He delves sagaciously into many themes. Including, for example, the question of the placebo – extended to many other areas than its use as medicine. The famous French Theory – and its concept of deconstruction –, which we see how it prepared the ground for the movement woke. A failed attempt at polyamory. Without forgetting conspiracy theories, algorithms that push us into false certainties, as well as the way in which virtual, ultra-connected life can take precedence over “real” life.
The narrative which unfolds over several decades allows us to discover the childhood and adolescence of the two lovers. The construction is flawless, as is the depth of the analyzes and the finesse of the style. All the reflections carried out by Hill with mischievous intelligence (on Facebook, “placebo love”, “non-fidelity” in the couple) never prevent his novel from being deeply moving.
Well-being – Nathan Hill (translated from English (United States) by Nathalie Bru), Editions Gallimard, 688 p., €26.
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