Oprah Winfrey's Latest 'Vibrant' Book Club Pick Is 20 Years in the Making & It's 30% Off Right Now

09/19/2023

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Like every month, we look forward to see what book Oprah Winfrey chooses for her famous book club. And, for the month of September, the former TV host and author did not disappoint.

Winfrey announced her new book club pick this morning: Wellness: A Novel by Nathan Hill. Sitting next to Hill on CBS Mornings, Winfrey broke down why she “loved” the book and Hill dished on the impressive 20-year inspiration.

“It’s basically a love story gone wrong,” Winfrey said of the book, which follows a 20-year relationship between characters Elizabeth and Jack. “I loved it because it was set in Wicker Park and it felt, in the beginning, very familiar to me. And then Jack and Elizabeth became less and less familiar to me.”

Winfrey then told Hill, “I really appreciated your ability to take language and draw us into the story is such a modern, contemporary, vibrant way.”

For Hill, who’s a best-selling author from his previous novel The Nix, the inspiration behind Jack and Elizabeth’s story was a long time in the making. “The first chapter is a short story that I wrote almost 20 years ago now,” he told the hosts. “I had just moved to New York City, I was living in this tiny studio apartment in Queens, I had nothing but a mattress on the floor, and my window looked out to this wall of other windows and I imagined this scene where two lonely people we’re glimpsing each other through those windows and slowly falling in love.”

Many years later, Hill revisited the story in a completely different light. “Fast-forward 15 to 20 years and I’m older, I’ve been happily married for many years and I think back to that couple and I thought ‘Maybe they were romantic but also they were really naive,’” Hill said.

“They’re maybe kind of idiots, like projecting these fantasies onto the other people without even knowing them,” he continued. “And it made me wonder what would’ve become of these people, you know, if we tracked them, if they got together, if they got married, if they became parents. What would happen to them? So I started writing that.”

For Winfrey, it’s clear that reading the book had a lasting effect, even if she wouldn’t invite Jack and Elizabeth for coffee anytime soon. “What I learned is that when you’re sitting with a good book are you’re allowed to be transported to another way of being and other people’s experiences, for me that’s the best type of relaxation and comfort,” she said, before jokingly adding, “And so spending time with Jack and Elizabeth it was good to know them through a novel.”

Hill, on the other hand, had an even more insightful answer when asked what he wants readers to take away from the novel. “Everybody believes stories about themselves. They believe stories about the people in their lives, about the world. And because we’re fallible, some of those stories are gonna need amendments and some of those stories are going to be wrong,” he said. “And so, believe what you believe, he says, but believe lightly, believe with curiosity, believe with humility. I think that’s kind of at the heart of the book.” Wellness: A Novel is available right now at 30% off on Amazon, get your own today!

Before you go, click here to see 10 of Reese Witherspoon’s best book club picks.