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What I have read

#4162 What I have read : Nathan Hill, Wellness

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photo: Spring in Nelson

Nathan Hill, Wellness, 2023, Picador, 597p.

The main characters of the story are called Elizabeth and Jack. They meet in Chicago, at the beginning of the Internet. Jack is a photographer, Elizabeth is a psychologist, or something like that. The reader follows their evolution until they have a child (until he is about ten years old), Toby, and, finally, buy an apartment in Chicago.

Between the starting point and the end point, we learn where they come from: Jack from a family of farmers on the prairies, Elizabeth from a very wealthy family. They met in Chicago, when they are both trying to escape their families, although for different reasons. Hill gives them the floor, each in turn, as well as to their respective families and in doing so addresses many themes such as art, more specifically photography, the beauty of the prairies, which he speaks about at length in a moving, fair, and sensitive way, the difficulty of escaping one’s past, motherhood, Facebook algorithms, the invasion of our lives by apps, the notion of well-being or the chaos of our times among other things.

This author writes extremely well while being easy to read and often funny. He manages to talk about delicate subjects (male desire in a feminist world or swinging, while avoiding falling in all possible traps). It is obvious that his writing is based on research but, unlike many books I have read in recent years, the research he conducted to nourish his writing blends into the voices of the characters, instead of leaving a bad taste of « copy and paste » that comes from Wikipedia.

Yes, I found the chapters on Facebook algorithms tedious, otherwise, the 597 pages of reading (notwithstanding the many acknowledgements and very long bibliography) are worth it. It was practically impossible to arrive at an ending that would surpass the beautiful moments of the reading and one cannot therefore blame him for letting the reader down a little at the end. A singular voice in the landscape of the novel, very much in tune with our times. Definitely worth reading.

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What I have read : Virginie Despentes

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 Vernon Subutex
I have not read a lot in the last few months as  I’m finishing The Grey Country, my novel about language and identity and I do not have a lot of  time, but I wanted to go back to a book (actually two) from Virginie Despentes  I read last autumn.


Virginie Despentes made her debut as a writer with Fuck me , a book I did not read,  but saw its film version in Christchurch at the Film Festival many years ago (but I left before the end). This book tells the story of a girl raped by three men and her revenge (mostly). Virginie Despentes herself was a victim of rape in her youth (but instead of feeling victim, she  rather felt anger). She has been a prostitute for a while, was  a porn film reviewer, and identifies as a lesbian and a feminist.


Vernon Subutex (spoilers alert !!) was released in 2015 as a  part of a trilogy. I read the first volume in English (a good translation) and the second in French. This is the story of a record store owner who  becomes homeless (volume 1) then guru (more or less, in volume 2), as well as the story of  people around him. I wanted to read the first volume, because it was  talked a lot when it came out and polarised opinions.


In French,  reviewers  who liked the book focused on  her  style (which is sometimes compared to that of Balzac) and the authenticity of the voices. I quite agree with these critics. I rather liked reading the first volume. The pace is sharp and the characters compelling (except the final delirium of Vernon Subutex). I enjoyed it  enough to continue reading the second volume, where the density is lost, the characters are less convincing,  and the story drags. The episode of the girl who « tattoos » the man  she believes to be responsible for the death of her mother is a little too much like the scene from The Girl with a golden tatoo to convince me.

Those who did not like the book  found the thread of the story a little thin (I quite agree with them, but that was not the goal of Despentes, I think) and did not like the characters animated by hatred and power struggles (and I quite agree with them too), which is true but probably corresponds to a certain humanity, probably far from ideal but perhaps a more realistic one. English language reviewers seemed to  like it more, perhaps because, for once, they are presented with something other than the Parisian intelligentsia and a France, which perhaps corresponds more to the one they know. And perhaps for the same reason,   some Parisian intelligentsia did not like Despentes’s book. Or it depicts human beings who are rather ordinary, from the point of view of their character, who may look a little too much like we are : not always noble, sometimes mean, etc. This is probably not the book to read for those who need to regain confidence in humanity. The Irish Times particularly liked Vernon Subutex 1 and even goes so far as to say that Despentes leaves Houellebecq far behind, quite a compliment, given his international prestige. As for me, the second volume disappointed me enough not to make me want to read the third right now, but I may  come back to it one day or the other.