The Nix
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3.8 • 16 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
The dazzling New York Times bestseller
"Nathan Hill is a maestro" John Irving
"Sparkling, sweeping debut novel that takes in a large swath of recent American history and pop culture ... A grand entertainment" Kirkus
Meet Samuel Andresen-Anderson - stalled writer, bored teacher at a local college, obsessive player of online video games. He hasn't seen his mother, Faye, in decades, not since she abandoned her family when he was a boy. Now she has suddenly reappeared, having committed an absurd politically-motivated crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the Internet, and inflames a divided country. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high school sweetheart. Which version of his mother is true? Two facts are certain - she's facing some serious charges, and she needs Samuel's help.
As Samuel begins to excavate his mother's - and his country's - history, the story moves from the rural Midwest of the 1960s, to New York City during the Great Recession and the Occupy Wall Street movement, and back to the infamous riots at the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention. Finally, the trail leads him to wartime Norway, home of the mysterious Nix that his mother told him about as a child, a spirit that can take the shape of a white horse, luring children to their deaths. And in these places, Samuel will unexpectedly find that he has to rethink everything he ever knew about his mother - a woman with an epic story of her own, a story she has kept hidden from the world.
PRAISE FOR THE NIX
"The Nix will go down as one of the best debut books of the year." Dallas Morning News
"Hill skillfully blends humor and darkness, imagery and observation. ... [a] rich, lively take on American social conflict, real and invented, over the last half-century." Publishers Weekly
"This looks to be the debut of an important new writer, able to variously make readers laugh out loud while providing a melancholy, resonant tale." USA Today
"Pay attention. This is what a Great American Novel looks like. ... Nathan Hill is a literary powerhouse who will deservedly earn many comparisons to John Irving and Jonathan Franzen." Benjamin Percy, author of Red Moon and The Wilding
"Once in a while a novel arrives at the perfect moment to reflect, skewer, and provide context for the world as we know it. This-now-is that novel." Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hill's first novel offers an ironic view of 21st-century elections, education, pop culture, and marketing, with flashbacks to 1988, 1968, and 1944. The action begins in 2011, when Samuel Anderson, an English professor who prefers playing World of Elfquest online to teaching Hamlet to college students, learns that Faye, the mother who abandoned him when he was 11, has been arrested for throwing stones at flamboyant ultraconservative presidential candidate Sheldon Packer. News media repeatedly show Faye's photo from her young hippie days along with a video of the attack. In an attempt to help his mother and himself, Samuel digs into Faye's past, focusing on the Iowa town where she grew up and 1968 Chicago, where she unwittingly became caught between protesters and police. Samuel's search with assistance from Pwnage, an Elfquest savant uncovers a judge with a 50-year-old grudge, a grandfather with a 70-year-old secret, and a world where the official story and the truth often diverge. The Nix of Hill's title is a Norwegian mythological being that carries loved ones away, a physical and metaphorical representation of fear and loss, much like the Under Toad in John Irving's The World According to Garp. Like Irving, Hill skillfully blends humor and darkness, imagery and observation. He also excels at describing technology, addiction, cultural milestones, and childhood ordeals. Cameos by Allen Ginsberg, Walter Cronkite, and Hubert Humphrey add heart and perspective to this rich, lively take on American social conflict, real and invented, over the last half-century. 100,000-copy announced first printing.
Customer Reviews
Master of story writing
If you’re a John Irving fan you will love this book. An exciting new author who combines all the essential ingredients in this novel to produce a classic read.
Great characters, story lines, humour, tension and plot. I was sad to finish this novel and look forward to more from this writer in the future.
All for nix
Author
American. From Iowa which means he didn't have far to go to get to the writer's workshop. His short fiction has been published in all the right places, well, some of them. This, his first novel, had big wraps on it prior to release, with Hill labelled "the next big thing" in the Land of the Free. (That happens a lot over there).
Plot
The protagonist, Samuel Andresen-Anderson, was a rising literary star in his early twenties after an extravagantly reviewed short story was published in "the magazine," which remains unnamed, but screams 'The New Yorker' to me. Trouble is, Sammy boy's now in his late thirties, and hasn't managed to get anything else published. He teaches at a small unnamed college in the Chicago area, and is mucho disenchanted with his job and his students. Unmarried with no GF, our boy's main interest is on-line video gaming, specifically 'World of Elfcraft' or something similar. Then his mother Faye, who abandoned the family and disappeared when young Sam was still in short pants, lobs up in the news for chucking gravel and small rocks at a populist conservative politician promenading through a city park with a gaggle of reporters and acolytes in tow. The outspoken Senator might lose an eye, which is a problem when you only have one, metaphorically if not literally. Maybe Faye just happened to be sitting in that park catching some rays but, in short order, the press turn her into some sort of card-carrying radical once her counterculture activities back in the sixties come to light. Long story short, a tearful reunion isn't what Sam, who still holds a major grudge towards Mom, is after. Rather, he hits on the idea of writing about her to revive his career as a scribbler.
Characters
All flawed significantly, none with much prospect of redemption.
Writing
Some funny moments. The satire on academia and liberal arts colleges is biting
at times. The plot jags back and forth reminiscent of Donna Tartt, but the prose is straightforward, easily accessible to ordinary readers like me rather than other writers or aspiring ones.
Bottom line
Writers who write about being writers rarely float my boat. Mr Hill is no exception. Plus the book's far too long. (So was Ms Tartt's 'The Goldfinch' now I come to think of it.) I could cut 150 pages easily, a good editor undoubtedly more. But, hey. That's just me.