The Nix – Nathan Hill

This has been on my TBR for YEARS. I’m not sure why – I liked the description, I think:

'The best new writer of fiction in America. The best.' John Irving
Meet Samuel: 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 America. 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 Occupy Wall Street, back to Chicago in 1968 and, finally, to wartime Norway, home of the mysterious Nix.
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.

I’ve read a couple of John Irving novels and liked them, they’re quite dry but really funny in places.

It’s a bit longer than books I’ve been reading recently, weighing in at 640 pages for the hardback. Thank goodness for kindles! As it’s a bit longer it’s taken me a couple of weeks to read it – if I’m honest with myself though, it would have been less time if I’d avoided ‘the socials’ a bit more but het, you need to do what you can, right?

Samuel Andreson-Anderson is a mid thirties college professor anchored to this world only through the online World of Warcaft-esque tentative relationships he has in his guild. He doesn’t really see his father and his mother left them when he was small. A promising literary career stalled out of the gate as he’s failed to deliver on the contract with even one of the books he promised.

I thought the start of the book took a while to take shape as we are introduced to and follow a few different characters, without seeing their connection upfront. This does become clear pretty soon though, as Samuel’s day gets much worse by being re-acquainted with his estranged mother by way of being America’s most wanted domestic terrorist.

It’s not quite a bildungsroman in narrative but something in it reminded me of Great Expectations or Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch – Samuel is crippled with shyness and obsessed with a girl he met at ten years old, also searching for the mother he lost. It had the same sense of sprawl too, loping back and forth over years and continents. Samuel’s grandfather was Norwegian and told his mother traditional folk stories designed to make small children behave. Not very nice ones, passed onto Samuel.

I enjoyed the character arc, and thought it was quite unusually done – his mother voiced through Samuel, via other people he meets on his journey to discover who she really is and what really happened to make her leave. The voices were fully formed and while I didn’t empathise entirely all of the time, I was able to see other points of view. I also thought that Faye, his mother, featured much more than I expected.
There’s a very arch double meta textual reference in there about Samuel being asked to write a book and ostensibly, writing a book about not being able to write a book – very Keatsian. The other level of meta reference is, I think, with Hill himself. I get the impression that there is not too much distance between author and character, and Wikipedia tells me that his notable work is The Nix, published in 2016.

I’d definitely be interested in another novel or short story from him, I enjoyed reading this and was glad to have kept it on my list for so long. Recommended for fans of Tartt, Irving and I think, a bit of Douglas Coupland too.

Thanks to netgalley and PanMacMillan for the ARC – sorry it took me so long to get to it!

Any kind of comparison to John Irving? Lock me in. An endorsement from John Irving? Sign me up. It’s how I came to read The Nix by Nathan Hill.

At 640 pages, there’s a lot to The Nix but essentially, it is the story of Samuel Andresen-Anderson and his mother, Faye. Shifting between the present (Samuel is a stalled writer, bored teacher at a local college, and obsessive player of an online video game, Elfscape); Samuel’s childhood; and Faye’s college years, the story unravels why Faye walked out on Samuel when he was a child. Having known nothing about her whereabouts for years, Faye shows up on the evening news, throwing rocks at a presidential candidate. The media paints her as a militant radical with a sordid past, quite different to what Samuel remembers.

It’s easy to see the parallels between The Nix and Irving’s work – big, sprawling stories where the main character (a male) has a ‘mother issue’, and intimately understands abandonment. There’s humour and a little heartbreak. There’s a superb sense of time and place – in The Nix, it’s the tumultuous politics of the sixties, and the carefully created online world of Elfscape. Like Irving, Hill provides detailed back-stories that, while aren’t critical to the story, are enjoyable.

The title of the book, The Nix, is taken from a story in Norse mythology. As Faye explains to Samuel, “The things you love the most will one day hurt you the worst…The Nix doesn’t appear as a horse anymore…it usually appears as a person. Usually it’s someone you think you love.” Hill uses the Nix as a guiding metaphor and although it could have been heavy-handed, the inclusion of other themes, particularly how we form memories, instead creates interesting connections between Samuel’s real life, what he desires, and his parallel Elfscape world.

Any problem you face in a video game or in life is one of four things: an enemy, obstacle, puzzle, or trap. That’s it. Everyone you meet in life is one of those four things.

Hill switches between intelligently funny and wise with ease. The voice of Elfscape gamer, Pwnage, is a highlight –

Because he knew in some way the game was all false and illusionary and the places he ‘remembered’ didn’t really exist except as digital code stored on his computer’s hard drive. But then he thought about this time he climbed to the top of a mountain on the northern edge of Elfscape’s western continent and watched the moon rise over the horizon, watched the moonlight sparkle off the snow, and he thought it was beautiful, and he thought about how people talked about feeling transported by works of art…and he decided there was really no difference between their experience and his experience. Sure, the mountain wasn’t real, the moonlight wasn’t real, but the beauty? And his memory of it? That was real.

The problem with a John Irving comparison is just that – it’s hard to match Irving. And yes, I know some of his more recent stuff isn’t like his earlier work but his stories stay in my heart. Will The Nix stay in my heart? Not in the same way as Owen Meany but there’s so many elements of this book that will.

4/5 It’s not Irving but it’s very, very good.

I received my copy of The Nix from the publisher, Pan Macmillan, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

There are many things in this novel (a debut!) that are brilliant, and there is no doubt that the author is a very talented writer. But for me, a plot-oriented reader admittedly, the storytelling was often quite heavyhanded, there were too many obvious clues, and a rather clumsy wrap-up that was just too neat.

I couldn't get into this book at all - I tried twice in case I just wasn't in the mood the first time - and eventually gave up. I don't have anything particularly bad to say - this book is getting rave reviews but somehow it's just not for me.

I didn't rate it online because I didn't finish it

“Sometimes we’re so wrapped up in our own story that we don’t see how we’re supporting characters in someone else’s.”

The Nix is the story of a boy whose mother abandons him when he is only 11 years old. 20 years later his mother earns notoriety for attacking a US governor. The plot follows Samuel’s journey to understanding why the mother he once knew would commit such a crime uncovering a history he never knew about his family.

The novel itself held so much promise however I was a little disappointed with the plot, the crime committed by the mother seemed like a minor offence blown out of proportion. Although clever, the narrative told from various points of view did not always work, especially Pwnage who I do not feel really fit into the story. Yet despite this I could not put the book down and couldn’t wait to see where the story would lead.

Unfortunately I think I was hopeful of a better ending and more from the plot but overall the Nix, although not as exciting as I originally expected, was a pleasant and very readable debut.

Many thanks to the publisher for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
3.5 stars.

The Nix is a long book, and it took me a long time to read it. Sometimes I was reading the book every day, and sometimes I had a week-long break from reading. This definitely had an effect on my experience with the book. The Nix is a mashup of stories of many different people, with stories of two people at the front - Samuel and his mother Faye. This collage of stories seems off at the beginning, it's confusing on what the story really will be about. Just later you notice what's really important and brings value to the overall message of the book. I can see how the author wanted to add those parts about Samuel's student, and his game buddies. But some of them just felt unnecessary. I enjoyed them, but I also wouldn't miss them if they never made to the book.

Reading The Nix was really emotional for me. It has parts that made me cry, other made me extremely angry at the world, and some made me smile and laugh. I love books that make me feel all of the feels. I'm impressed with author's ability to write so beautifully, and so masterfully trigger emotions in the readers.

The Nix is a complex story, that at the core is about the mother and the son. It's about her childhood and how it impacted her life, and how it impacted the lives of her son. It's about the son and effect of his childhood on his adult life. It's a great read, and I'll definitely will read Hill's next book.

TL;DR: it's certainly an extensive work about many important subjects, but it's not for everybody. Personally, I would have kept the beginning and the end.

The Nix is a book about many things. Some of them include:
- the power police has and how they misuse it maliciously
- the 60-70s as the age of freedom which was more imaginary than true
- how nothing has really changed all that much since then
- how mental illness can prevent your life from, basically, working out at all, no matter where you go and what you do
- how freedom of speech and choice is but a mirage
- how sometimes it's more like life plays us and not we play life

The Nix is as angry, grotesque and aggressive as it is thoughtful, philosophical and pacifist, even if that sounds irreconcilable. The archetypal characters symbolize all sorts of human trauma and vice, and the fundamental flaws in our society. The funny thing is that over here, in Eastern Europe, we always thought that America was the land of freedom, emancipated and all, but judging by everything I've read about the 60-70s... the government forces could do and did anything it wanted - just like over here. It was just candy-wrapped in a nicer manner.

Reading this book put me in a big slump during the middle and I couldn't come back to it for a long time, several months at least. Because although this book covers a lot of important topics, it's also long and a little dragging. I liked 4 3 2 1, so I figured I would like The Nix too. But even though they're about similar times and topics, they are much different. While 4 3 2 1 was very personal, The Nix is very impersonal, or rather, it has quite an unlikeable cast of characters, so it's much harder to get invested in. That's why my final verdict would be 3 stars. You should read The Nix if you're not easily depressed by a book, read literary often and don't mind long winded books.

I thank the publisher for giving me a free copy in exchange to an honest review.

Entertaining but shallow and didn't leave me with any connection to the characters

Believe the hype: The Nix is an epic and ambitious novel, both in scope and size.

Brilliant, smart writing. Exquisite characterisations. Interesting and diverse subjects and themes. Yes, it's a bit book, but it's worth the time. And it's extremely readable.

The Nix is an impressive debut novel. An impressive novel. Period.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The Nix has garnered a lot of praise, and I was really looking forward to reading it...I hadn't quite realised how long it was though! The writing is great, and Hill manages to jump between comedy and poignancy very deftly. The characters are the novel's main strength - this is really a story of growing-up, and a mother-son relationship. It's also about love and fear, and the damage that we do to those we love the most. However, I do feel The Nix could have been even better with more judicious editing - some descriptive sections seemed repetitive and the length of the book meant that it wasn't always a satisfying read, as I didn't feel I made progress.

The Nix is an epic tour de force of a novel with much to admire. It tells the story of Samuel, whose mother abandons him suddenly at the age of eleven. Decades later, when he is teaching at a minor college and has yet to deliver on the novel for which he was paid a massive advance some time ago, his mother reappears in the national news headlines: she has been arrested for throwing gravel into the eyes of a conservative Republican presidential candidate, earning her the soubriquet The Packer Attacker. Even more puzzling, she has been outed by the media as a former subversive with a record of prostitution. How does this tally with the loving wife and mom of Samuel’s early childhood? His mother’s lawyer tracks down Samuel to act as a character witness, but his publisher has a better idea: write a warts-and-all biography of the woman who abandoned him in lieu of the undelivered novel.
This sprawling novel criss-crosses the decades as Samuel uncovers the secrets of not just his mother’s life but his own. The changes in point of view can be unsatisfying: just as we start to sympathise with one character the rug is pulled from underneath us and we are off somewhere else with someone else, and some of the satire, such as that dealing with Laura, the monstrously self-entitled student who proves Samuel’s undoing at work, can be too broad. But it’s hard not to admire a novel with such scope and depth, taking in as it does 60s girlhoods, MMO games (and their addictiveness), the Chicago riots, Norwegian folklore, sexual obsession and invasive mustard seedlings.

I found the start of this book somewhat slow but once it got going it felt panoramic.

Its panoramic view took in contemporary American culture from advertising, social media and malls to online gaming. It swept across the political scene from the 1960s to present day.

The plot followed several different viewpoints, time frames and settings.
The Norwegian "Nix" reminded me of the Essex Serpent in being a mythical "device" with chameleon levels of meanings according to the effect on the different characters. However Faye attributes the meaning "Don't trust things that are too good to be true" to the mythical horse. I am not sure how this borne out within the plot.

Primarily it is a novel about identity "seeing ourselves clearly is the project of a lifetime" Is identity tied up with belonging to a group such as a political group or an online gaming community? Does trauma shape a personality? How many "selves" can there be within a lifetime? These are all questions that Hill explores in the novel.

The nearest comparisons for me are probably Jonathan Franzen or John Irving. I shall look forward to his next book and wonder if he can achieve the same breadth of themes and vision in a maybe more succinct way?

This is a very long book! Samuel wanted to be an author but is really a failed teacher at a small college who escapes into a fantasy computer game. His mother is labelled a radical after a protest involving a Presidential candidate. Taking the theme of 'choice' Hill explores the last 50 years of american social history through a parade of characters. Most are unlovable but all reflect on the choices they made and whether life could have turned out differently.

Samuel Andresen-Anderson, a college professor with writer’s block, is suddenly reunited with his mother Faye who he has not seen for years, when she throws a handful of rocks at Governor Sheldon Packer, and gains notoriety as the ‘Packer Attacker’.
Samuel’s inability to produce a new book has put him in breach of contract and the only way to stop the publisher suing is to write his mother’s biography, because she is now a newsworthy item. This is not the only cloud on Samuel’s horizon, as a female student whose assignment Samuel will not sign off, because of its plagiarism, attempts to disgrace him in order to get the grades she needs.
It is not a joyful reunion with his mother, and as Samuel’s life begins to unravel he embarks on a journey to discover what happened in the past to the woman who abandoned him as a child. He also comes face-to-face with his own past and a possible chance this time to reunite with his lost love.
There is definitely a sense of Infinite Jest as you work through the cast of colourful characters in The Nix (all of whom are flawed in the most interesting ways), and the fly on the wall observations of their inner lives. The Nix is more succinct and the observations make it more of an intimate experience than Infinite Jest, rather than feeling as if you are observing from a distance as you would a film or TV programme. Each of the characters represents something of our society today.
Nathan Hill uses the type of humour which is delivered with pitch-perfect description, and makes you wince at the same time because there is so much there you will recognise in others or yourself. It is certainly a cutting and very elegant satire on consumerism and today’s society.
The part of the book set in the sixties, revolving around Samuel’s mother, Faye, offers a change of pace and does not display the same powerful writing style of that of the present day. But it provides important backstory as to why Faye became the wife and mother she was, as well as the ‘Packer Attacker’.
This is a book about choices and how the choices made even before someone is born might have a powerful influence on their life. In Samuel’s case it all begins with his grandfather, whose actions ripple all the way down to Samuel, who is at the epicentre of rapidly changing events over which, try as he might, he appears powerless to alter. Samuel’s life might have all the hallmark of the type of car crash which keeps you glued to the pages right to the end to see if he may in some way be redeemed from the powerful force hurling him through his chaotic and as yet unfulfilled life.

A solid 4 out of 5 stars.
"We are more politically fanatical than ever before, more religiously zealous, more rigid in our thinking, less capable of empathy. The way we see the world is totalizing and unbreakable. We are completely avoiding the problems that diversity and worldwide communication imply. Thus, nobody cares about antique ideas like true or false."

Nathan Hill's debut novel The Nix was one of my favorite reads of 2016. The novel follows two story lines: Samuel's and his mother Faye's. Samuel's story is set in present day. It details his rather sad life as a burnt-out college professor, an online fantasy game addict, and a stalled writer. Faye's story is mostly set in 1960s Chicago and details her involvement in the counterculture movement.

Samuel's mother, Faye Andreson, left him and his father when Samuel was a child. She recently committed a politically-motivated crime against a senator, bringing her back into Samuel's life and also exposing her past political activism. In a last effort to save his writing career, Samuel agrees to write a book about his mother, a woman he actually barely knows but starts to learn more about as he digs further into his research for the book. His publisher agrees to give Samuel this one last chance because he sees the possibility of cashing in on Faye's recent fame. Samuel's acceptance of the book assignment sets him on a path that brings him back into contact with his mother and forces him to address issues that have plagued him since even before she abandoned him. Faye's story is also a self-searching one. As an adult, Faye still seems to be searching for a sense of identity. It takes bringing Samuel and Faye back together, as well as some further soul-searching, to bring Faye the closure that her entire family has so desperately been seeking for generations.
"But Faye's opinion is that sometimes a crisis is not really a crisis at all—just a new beginning. Because one thing she's learned through all this is that if a new beginning is really new, it will feel like a crisis. Any real change should make you feel, at first, afraid."

Of the two story lines, I enjoyed Faye's much more than I did Samuel's. Samuel's did have some funny and emotionally touching parts, but I just loved the 1960s Chicago environment that Hill so vividly illustrated. In addition to being beautifully written, the novel holds much relevance in our current climate. It speaks to fundamental issues about the media, influence, and facts and how all of these can be manipulated to achieve different ends.
"That no such plans were ever actually considered was irrelevant. He had learned something important: What was printed became the truth."

I also really enjoyed the important role that literature played in this novel. Young Faye is an admirer of the poet Allen Ginsberg. She decides to attend the University of Illinois in Chicago because she heard that Ginsberg will be a visiting professor. Hill intersperses lines from Ginsberg's poetry throughout the book and I felt like this really added to the message. In this way, and in his mixing of historical fact and fiction, Hill gives substance to Faye's story and Samuel's story and makes them resonate with historical and present reality.
"[i]f you choose to see people as puzzles, and if you see yourself as a puzzle, then you will be constantly delighted, because eventually, if you dig deep enough into anybody, if you really look under the hood of someone's life, you will find something familiar. This is more work, of course, than believing they are enemies. Understanding is always harder than plain hatred. But it expands your life. You will feel less alone."

I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a fictional escape that still holds relevance in the current climate. If you want to learn about the 1960s counterculture movement, this is a fascinating read. If you'd like to think about how media has been and is being manipulated this is an excellent book to inspire critical thinking.

My copy of this book was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for helping me get a copy of this book.

I’m going to be honest and admit that I first heard about this book when Sarah-Jessica Parker posted a picture of it on Instagram with the caption, ‘please don’t end, please don’t end, please don’t end’, and, well, if it’s good enough for Carrie Bradshaw it’s good enough for me. I was intrigued by the synopsis; set in 2011 it tells the story of Samuel Andreson-Anderson who is faced with his estranged Mother after she attacks a politician causing a nationwide storm. The Nix spans decades; from the protests of Chicago in the 1960s to the present day in post-crash America and crosses both cities and continents. It’s an epic novel, coming in at 628 pages covering a whole range of writing styles as each character’s story is told.

This book had some of the things that I love most about a novel; multi-person narrative, a sprawling time span, a mystery, complex themes, strong storytelling, emotional investment and to top it off I learnt about something I had no idea about (Chicago’s part in the social unrest of the 1960’s). Nathan Hill has written an incredible novel which reminded me of Donna Tartt (The Secret History and The Goldfinch are two of my favourite novels) with a wonderful multi-person narrative which unfolds the story through a variety of writing styles. Samuel in particular was excellent, we learn about his life both as a child and in 2011 and there was a distinct difference between the way those two versions of Samuel were portrayed. His online gaming friend Pwange and student Laura are both exceptionally written and shine a spotlight on the influence of modern technology on day-to-day life (there is a chapter from Pwange’s point of view which is written as a stream of consciousness via one long sentence as he delves deeper into his World of Warcraft-esque game).

I really loved this book, at the halfway point I was torn between wanting to read it as much as possible and not wanting it to end. It is as much a social commentary as it is a book about relationships, politics, recession, corruption and modern media and it certainly gave me food for thought.

[book:The Nix|33628053] is longer than most books published nowadays. Yet, I did not want it to end.

[author:Nathan Hill|15376492]'s debut is heart-warming, thought-provoking and hilarious. A book to be savoured and reread. Highly, highly recommended.

(Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy!)

No book could be simultaneously more timely and more timeless than this future classic. The Nix is fun, joyous, exciting and tender; full of both the outrage, anger and giddy momentum of political change and subtle layers of sympathy for the characters at the heart of it.

It is inescapably apt that The Nix reaches UK shores the very same week we watch aghast as President Trump celebrates his inauguration. The novel opens with the scene of a Trump-esque Presidential candidate getting hit with a handful of gravel thrown by an angry middle-aged women. How many people worldwide would like to throw some gravel right now?

Protest is at the centre of The Nix. After the gravel incident, the woman who threw it becomes labelled by a hostile press as an angry hippie radical ex-prostitute; not a description that rings true for her son Samuel. She was his normal, suburban mum before she abandoned him, aged 11. The central thread of The Nix is Samuel trying to put together a profile of his estranged mum, and unearth the truth behind the mysterious photo of her, at the 1968 Chicago riots, that accompanies every news story. His publisher demands it or else they’re suing him for non-delivery of the novel they signed him to write years ago.

But while the Chicago protest is the climax of the book, the aspect which makes it so very timely is not the demonstration or the candidate, but that magical thing that makes reading wonderful: empathy.

That Obama reads fiction and Trump does not says a lot, and many fiction writers must be hunkering down right now trying to fill their pages with as diverse a cast of characters as they can, in the hope of somehow influencing voters of the future to have more empathy and compassion. If only every American citizen had The Nix as a required text before voting in this Presidential election!

The breadth of characters we get to know here is astounding, and many of them the sort who don’t often get a starring role in fiction. From the traditionally derided, like Pwnage - addicted to an online game inspired by World of Warcraft, to the amusingly annoying and manipulative student Laura Pottsdam, to the withdrawn and distant factory-working Norwegian immigrant to the squaddies taking bets over shooting a camel in Iraq. And while plenty is played for laughs, and many of the characters are unlikeable and clearly drawing on unsavoury motives, they are all painted with love, insight and affection. As one character reflects in the novel: “Seeing ourselves clearly is the project of a lifetime.” It feels as if Nathan Hill has crammed 10 lifetimes into writing this, and tried his best to see EVERYONE clearly.

It’s true The Nix is long (600+ pages) and at times feels like an indulgent, rambling rollercoaster of a book, but it filled me with joy - it’s exhilarating, life-affirming and brimming with empathy and love.