Wow. This is a stunner in terms of breadth and depth. Love, marriage, parenting, childhood, illness, wellness, the internet, Facebook, placebo, social science, art, upper education, gentrification, conspiracy theories, algorithms, certainty, belief. And more.

Of the several passages I have dog-eared to ponder further here’s the one I think is the heart of the book:

“….Over the years, I’ve found that people tend to act automatically and think automatically, but when they’re pressed to explain why they act or think a certain way, they rush into the void and invent a story. And then, incredibly, they believe that story….It doesn’t need to be true. It merely needs to be satisfying. We all do it, to some extent. Between ourselves and the world is a story. Often it’s a good story, a satisfying story, a personally appealing story….” (p 244)

The main story of the novel is the relationship between Elizabeth and Jack, transplants to Chicago from vastly different childhoods. The stories they tell about their childhoods and parents, the trauma they hide from each other, and the truths they refuse to see about themselves and each other make for a fascinating look at humanity.

The writing is exquisite, thought-provoking, witty. Here’s another:

“There was, Jack sometimes mused, a kind of church-like quality to the famers market: a bunch of similarly minded people waking up a little earlier than they’d probably prefer to wake up on a weekend, coming to a place that offered salvation from an abstract bad guy — either Satan or late capitalism, depending. The stories were different, but the dominant aesthetic seemed about the same: both the church and the famers market longed for a more pristine Earth, one as either God or nature originally intended, before humanity came along and fouled it up.” (p 349)

Epic. Intimate. Mind-blowing. 4.5 stars.