2 good books

Wellness | We All Want Impossible Things

Wellness by Nathan Hill (2023)

Wellness is about the stories we tell ourselves as we age — how we are and are not like our parents, how we are and are not like our younger selves, how we ever go to be this old.

Charting Jack and Elizabeth from the early ‘90s Wicker Park art scene to today’s Chicago suburbs, we find the couple in a rut. Romance is an afterthought, parenthood is harder than it looks, and their dream home’s construction is delayed.

It’s a book about being in the middle, at “the bottom of life’s U-shaped curve.” They’ve made it this far. Can they (and should they) keep going?

Related Reading: The Lure of Divorce by Emily Gould.

We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman (2023)

As much as a story about guiding a best friend through hospice can be charming, We All Want Impossible Things is.

It’s a meditation on friendship and dying, but it’s as if a friend were telling you their sleep-deprived yet beautiful thoughts about what happens to us next.

It’s sad, but it’s happy. It’s impossible, but it’s realistic. It’s life.