“Basically, I’m studying the whole human condition. Coming at it from every possible angle.”
This statement, proclaimed by Elizabeth to Jack upon first“Basically, I’m studying the whole human condition. Coming at it from every possible angle.”
This statement, proclaimed by Elizabeth to Jack upon first meeting during their Chicago college years, made me laugh. Fast forward through a twenty-year relationship and marriage and to the end of the book. I suddenly realized that Nathan Hill had done almost exactly that, studied the whole human condition, in this sweeping novel. He covers a lot of ground in these pages, and I was, for the most part, totally up for the ride. Marriage, parenting, city versus suburban versus rural life, capitalism, consumerism, the World Wide Web, Facebook and social media, psychology, placebos, monogamy, art and photography, and childhood traumas. These are among the themes Hill manages to tackle with great skill and humor. He backs everything up with a ton of research which he references at the end of the book.
The heart of the novel, however, is this marriage between Jack and Elizabeth and whether it’s something sustainable.
“It seemed that happiness spiked around age twenty, spiked again around age sixty, but bottomed out in between, which was where Jack and Elizabeth now found themselves, at the bottom of that curve, in midlife, a period that was notable not for its well-publicized “crisis” (actually a pretty rare phenomenon – only 10 percent of people reported having one) but for its slow ebb into a quiet and often befuddling restlessness and dissatisfaction.”
It's interesting to read this from the point of view of how a relationship unfolds just as the World Wide Web was unleashed and became an everyday part of our lives. When Jack and Elizabeth first met, the web was in its infant years. Jack really didn’t know a thing about it. Over the next twenty years, along with the development of various social media platforms, it seeps into every aspect of our daily living. We have become surrounded by stories. Our own stories and those stories that are told to us. We are inundated with advice and options. Elizabeth runs a company called Wellness, a place that specializes in “placebo” treatments. I admire the way Hill ties this into his idea of how we are shaped by those stories told by ourselves and others.
“Elizabeth wondered if her and Jack’s story wasn’t in fact just another highly embellished placebo, just a fiction they both believed because of how good and special it made them feel. And maybe all love was like that, a placebo, and maybe every marriage ceremony was part of that placebo’s elaborate ornamentation, its therapeutic context.”
One thing I should mention is the structure of the novel. Hill takes us fluidly back and forth in time between Jack and Elizabeth’s current situation, their early years, and each individual childhood. We even visited three generations of Elizabeth’s family, the self-made, wealthy Augustines. I’m not sure we needed the depth of those Augustine sections, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I truly enjoyed those detours! Hill goes on that rare list of authors who can seamlessly make those transitions in such a way that it greatly enhances the characterization of his protagonists. Besides Jack and Elizabeth, there are some nicely developed supporting characters as well. Honestly, Nathan Hill excels at this part and when he gets into the nitty gritty of his people, that’s when I was most engaged. I could have read an entire novel about Jack’s childhood alone! Gosh, I really did love what Hill did with him. Just read this one sentence, that says it all:
“Loneliness, it seems, holds him like a buttonhole.”
There’s a whole lot more I could say about this novel, but I’ve invested a lot of time already reading this hefty work. I also spent some meaningful time discussing this with my two savvy buddy readers and gained even more insight there. I’m very glad I read this. I will, however, admit to getting worn out for a couple of reasons. First, the extra digressions – particularly the section describing the algorithms of Facebook, a platform I tend to avoid when possible. Second, every now and then I felt the deep diving into the marriage and parenting of this couple was a bit too much for me. I’m a champion of succinct writing when it comes to topics like this and feel like points can be made just as effectively with a little less. Sometimes “less” has a deeper impact on this reader. But that’s a matter of personal taste. I certainly wouldn’t steer anyone away from this, if they aren’t hesitant to read something with such depth and breadth. Hill is one smart cookie and his prose is top notch!
I’ll finish with this little piece I’m going to walk away with as a personal reminder:
“Maybe it was like Dr. Sanborne said: certainty was just a story the mind created to defend itself against the pain of living. Which meant, almost by definition, that certainty was a way to avoid living. You could choose to be certain, or you could choose to be alive.”...more
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