The couple, both anchor and vertigo, mirror of a changing society. In his new novel, Nathan Hill reveals the raw beauty and searing flaws of this timeless institution.
It starts out as a romantic comedy, with slightly clichéd characters. Naively, we want more, we indulge in this lightness. But very quickly, we jump ahead twenty years, and the portrait of a contemporary society takes shape before our eyes. The couple's life becomes the theater of this society, which reveals itself in its most absurd forms, from protein powder to the latest applications. Education, sexuality, tastes, changing mores...
The modern couple: between raw reality and disenchantment
This is definitely not a book for dreaming. There's no dreamlike aura - the romanticism is almost immediately swatted away like a summer mosquito. This is the reality of our times, of the modern couple, in all its crudeness, almost satisfying and at the same time disturbing, detailed to the millimeter. It's a world without poetry, where consumerism and frenzy around futile things reign supreme.
Nathan Hill places us as the third element in the couple's relationship, as judge; we are sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other. The famous routine that has swept away passion and against which we fight relentlessly is laid out before us. But what Hill is really trying to tell us is what Frédéric Beigbeder says in his song Interview Experience de Bon Entendeur: in the narrow world of the 21st centuryth We don't smoke, we don't drink, we don't fuck. We eat seeds and turn paranoid. We stare at ourselves in the mirror in search of artificial perfection.
Not to mention that this is an American novel. The society depicted is not that of the Parisian dandy who hangs out on the terrace of a café. We're dealing here with reality. It hurts, it slaps us in the face. But doesn't the weight of this reality, heavy as it is, make us take a step back? Our endless questions about the pursuit of happiness suddenly seem exquisitely sweet.
Write to the author: sofia.frosio@leregardlibre.com
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Nathan Hill
Wellness
Gallimard
August 2024
688 pages
French 
German 
English