Nova Scotia writer lampoons Goop-style, guru leaders, new age retreats and the search for eternal youth

The wellness industry, like the fashion industry, is very easy to burlesque. But like the fashion industry, the wellness industry is also resistant to lampooning, in large part because it does such a good job lampooning itself.

It was, after all, one of the most famous wellness startups around, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, that suggested women could improve “vaginal muscle tone” by the insertion of jade eggs. That idea, along with Paltrow’s suggestion that women steam their vaginas to clean them, drew the ire of Canadian OB-GYN and bestselling author Dr. Jen Gunter, who in a 2017 blog post referred to Goop as a “scare factory.”

It’s not difficult to discern the provenance of the wellness line Goddess in Nova Scotian Deborah Hemming’s second novel of the same name. The self-help empire, and the beauty products it hawks, are the brainchild of Geia Stone, a former actor turned guru to women wishing to retain the gleam and skin tone of eternal youth. She has an ex-husband, ludicrously named Jack Verity, with whom she maintains a congenial relationship. (“They made overcoming personal messiness and resentment look easy. Too easy.”)

In case the references are too subtle, Hemming’s first-person narrator, novelist Agnes Oliver, stipulates that “Geia championed controversial self-care treatments and practices, from vaginal steaming to microdosing magic mushrooms.”

If Geia (pronounced “JEE-ah,” not “GUY-ah”) is a fictional stand-in for Paltrow, that is the beginning of Hemming’s narrative, not the end. Because Geia becomes a complicated, contradictory figure — in addition to being a wholesome, physically flawless public figure, she drinks and swears profligately in private — complete with supernatural undertones. Agnes’s quest to uncover the truth about Geia forms the spine of Hemming’s story.

Admittedly, it takes a while to get to this point. The novel opens with Agnes, author of the bestselling novel “Violets in Her Lap,” heading to New York City for the launch of the U.S. edition. The novel, a strange eco-fable told from the perspective of nature’s flora and fauna, arose out of a strange experience Agnes had as a child during which a yellow, shimmering “magic dust” surrounded her while she was seeking refuge from her family in the woods. This incident, narrated in a brief prologue, is the first moment of unreality in the novel. It will not be the last.

Deborah Hemming, author of “Goddess,” House of Anansi

On the plane to New York, Agnes encounters her seatmate, who is none other than Jack Verity. He surprises her by attending her book launch, the two fall into a relationship and, before she knows it, Agnes is invited to Geia’s summer home to celebrate Jack’s birthday.

The first direct encounter between Agnes and Geia occurs more than 100 pages into the novel, though it is this relationship that will come to dominate the balance of the book, with Jack a walking MacGuffin who is more or less shunted off the stage for the remainder. In brief, Agnes agrees to be Geia’s guest in Greece for a Goddess wellness retreat during which 50 devotees of the brand will spend 10 days undergoing a series of beautification and self-improvement seminars focusing on everything from art therapy to correct masturbation techniques.

As all of this unfolds, Agnes begins to suspect that Geia is more than she appears to be, an inkling that first developed during a nighttime scene at the guru’s summer house during which Agnes spied her naked on the lawn with her pet snake, Kathari. The two seem to be sharing an intimate moment and, more concerningly, Geia appears to be glowing ethereally.

The reason for all of this is not divulged until the final pages of the novel. When the truth about Geia is finally revealed, it upends our understanding of everything that has gone before. What has unfolded for the most part as a satire of California woo-woo becomes something more ambiguous, a potential to let Geia off the hook by redefining her true nature. But this, and Agnes’s ongoing belief in Geia’s powers, also lends an uncomfortable aspect to the book’s final stages. Without giving too much away, it literalizes what has to that point remained metaphorical, in so doing undercutting any satirical intent the novel might have had.

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