The irony of wellness
Though the title suggests the couple in the novel might be heading toward wellness, the story is doomed from the start. The couple is not moving together toward health, as the reader might have wanted to expect, but rather, the one-sided, experimental treatment of Kellogg brings the wife to a place of happiness (by pleasure primarily) while sending her husband backward into despair and agony.
The irony of breakfast cereal
When the reader realizes that this story is about psychological torture on one hand, and about happiness and health on the other hand, they might feel they have a grasp on the novel, but then we meet Charlie Ossining and discover the secret plot of the novel: the birth of the Kellogg breakfast cereal company. Why? The irony is mysterious, leaving the reader to question the novel's absurdity.
The irony of "alternative medicine"
Just because the West functions on a somewhat scientific approach to medicine, that doesn't mean medicine isn't still "trial and error," but then again, this novel takes the word "alternative" and blows it way out of proportion, so much so that the word "medicine," doesn't even really apply anymore. What is Will's experience of "psychotherapy?" Is it quite literal torture, and emotional humiliation.
The irony of the cheating wife
Is Eleanor cheating on her husband to accept "medical" massages from handsome men who often massage her in erotic ways? What is the difference between this "massage therapy," and therapy by affair? She is delighted by sexual attention, and ironically, she doesn't really give her husband's point of view any consideration. She has a right to any "medicine," these nice doctors suggest, she feels. These points of view aren't exactly a picture of "sacrificial love."
The irony of disenfranchisement
Because of the serious struggle of Will's life, he is often unavailable to his wife, and in an accidental way, he disenfranchises her, because her issues are always second to his. This is partially due to the severity of his journey through addiction and sobriety, though he remains an alcoholic. By the end, he is the one disenfranchised from his own wife, from his investments in the relationship, from his point of view, and he is even disenfranchised from his literal freedom and sanity.
