SEPTEMBER 2016 - AudioFile
The inspired pairing of one of the most promising novelists in years with a gifted narrator who brings intelligence, humor, and immediacy to every word makes for a rare listening treat. Ari Fliakos finds a true and distinct voice for every character—from the emotionally overwhelmed and underachieving writer in search of his long absent mother to a hippie entrepreneur on the make, a dirty cop on the take, a vocally fried coed, and even a sly Norwegian house spirit, the Nix himself. Sometimes a heartbreaking coming-of-age tale, at other times a searing sociopolitical examination of the last 60 years, this sprawling and very American story makes for marvelous listening. With a perfect mix of vocal energy, world-weariness, and keen observations, Hill’s novel seems boundless. B.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
★ 05/02/2016
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. Agent: Emily Forland, Brandt & Hochman Literary. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
“The Nix is a mother-son psychodrama with ghosts and politics, but it’s also a tragicomedy about anger and sanctimony in America. Even the minor characters go to extremes—among them, a Home Ec teacher from Hell and an unrepentant plagiarist with presidential aspirations. ‘A maestro of being awful,’ the son calls his mom. ‘Every memory is really a scar,’ she tells him. For this mother and son, disappointment is ‘the price of hope’—a cost they will both bear. Nathan Hill is a maestro of being terrific.” —John Irving
“There is an accidental topicality in Hill’s debut, about an estranged mother and son whose fates hinge on two mirror-image political events—the Democratic Convention of 1968 and the Republican Convention of 2004. But beyond that hook lies a high-risk, high-reward playfulness with structure and tone: comic set-pieces, digressions into myth, and formal larks that call to mind Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad.” —New York Magazine
“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. A satirical, fast-paced romp through time and space, The Nix is ambitious, wide-ranging, and full of surprises. It gathers force and momentum as it speeds toward the end, where all of its pieces fit together as precisely as a puzzle.” —Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train
“Nathan Hill's The Nix is a huge, intimate, funny, beautifully intelligent novel—one of those books that almost seems to be alive: you open it up and are pulled within, and you live in the heartbeat of its pages, day after day. This is a lovely, smart, surprising read.” —Julie Schumacher, Thurber Prize-winning author of Dear Committee Members
"Pay attention. This is what a Great American Novel looks like. The Nix is culturally relevant, politically charged, historically sweeping, sad, full of yearning, sometimes dark but mostly hilarious. Nathan Hill is a literary powerhouse who will deservedly earn many comparisons to John Irving and Jonathan Franzen." —Benjamin Percy, author of The Dead Lands, Red Moon, The Wilding and Refresh, Refresh
“Place Nathan Hill’s engrossing, skewering, and preternaturally timely tale beside the novels of Tom Wolfe, John Irving, Donna Tartt, and Michael Chabon. . . . Cartwheeling among multiple narrators, The Nix spins the galvanizing stories of three generations derailed in unexpected ways. . . . Hill takes aim at hypocrisy, greed, misogyny, addiction, and vengeance with edgy humor and deep empathy in a whiplashing mix of literary artistry and compulsive readability.” —Booklist (Starred Review)
“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 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.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
"[A] sparkling, sweeping debut novel that takes in a large swath of recent American history and pop culture and turns them on their sides. . . .There are hints of Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys as Hill, by way of his narrative lead, wrestles alternately converging and fugitive stories onto the page, stories that range from the fjords of Norway to the streets of "Czechago" in the heady summer of 1968. There are also hints of Pynchon, though, as Hill gently lampoons advertising culture, publishing, academia, politics, and everything in between. A grand entertainment, smart and well-paced, and a book that promises good work to come." —Kirkus (Starred Review)
“Ix-nay all plans and grab a copy of The Nix! Nathan Hill's novel is smart, inventive, and fun, as you might expect of a book that features a slew of elves and the 1968 Democratic Convention. I will read it again; I will keep it on my shelf of favorites, feed it sugar water, and hope it miraculously grows longer. Do you understand? The Nix is dead serious and delightful.” —Sara Levine, author of Treasure Island!!!
Library Journal
★ 07/01/2016
When Samuel Andreson-Anderson was growing up, his mother, Faye, drew on folklore related by her Norwegian-born father to tell him about the Nix, a water spirit in the form of a white horse that carries too-trusting children to their deaths. The moral, she explained, is that "the things you love the most will one day hurt you the worst." That proves prophetic, for one day she simply walks out. Now a middling English professor and novelist manqué who seeks escape through endless rounds of Elfquest, Sam learns that the 60ish woman who tossed rocks at a right-wing governor is his mother. He visits her, ostensibly because her lawyer laughably wants him for the defense, more obviously because his fed-up publisher wants him to write a seething best seller about his abandonment, but ultimately and bitterly to learn what happened. She's not forthcoming, but debut novelist Hill certainly is, spinning through nearly 700 pages of addictive, tightly packed prose that chronicles Faye's circumscribed upbringing and risky breakout in 1968 Chicago; young Sam's sustaining relationships with tough friend Bishop and Bishop's beautiful violinist sister, Bethany; and much more. VERDICT Offering engrossing prose, multiple interlocking stories, and deftly drawn characters, Hill shows us how the interlinked consequences of our actions can feel like fate.—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
SEPTEMBER 2016 - AudioFile
The inspired pairing of one of the most promising novelists in years with a gifted narrator who brings intelligence, humor, and immediacy to every word makes for a rare listening treat. Ari Fliakos finds a true and distinct voice for every character—from the emotionally overwhelmed and underachieving writer in search of his long absent mother to a hippie entrepreneur on the make, a dirty cop on the take, a vocally fried coed, and even a sly Norwegian house spirit, the Nix himself. Sometimes a heartbreaking coming-of-age tale, at other times a searing sociopolitical examination of the last 60 years, this sprawling and very American story makes for marvelous listening. With a perfect mix of vocal energy, world-weariness, and keen observations, Hill’s novel seems boundless. B.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2016-05-18
Sparkling, sweeping debut novel that takes in a large swath of recent American history and pop culture and turns them on their sides.The reader will be forgiven for a certain sinking feeling on knowing that the protagonist of Hill's long yarn is—yes—a writer, and worse, a writer teaching at a college, though far happier playing online role-playing games involving elves and orcs and such than doling out wisdom on the classics of Western literature. Samuel Andresen-Anderson—there's a reason for that doubled-up last name—owes his publisher a manuscript, and now the publisher is backing out with the excuse, "Primarily, you're not famous anymore," and suing to get back the advance in the bargain. What's a fellow to do? Well, it just happens that Samuel's mother, who has been absent for decades, having apparently run off in the hippie days to follow her bliss, is back on the scene, having become famous herself for chucking a rock at a rising right-wing demagogue, the virulent Gov. Sheldon Packer. Hill opens by running through the permutations of journalism that promote her from back to front page, with a run of ever more breathless headlines until a "clever copywriter" arrives at the sobriquet "Packer Attacker," "which is promptly adopted by all the networks and incorporated into the special logos they make for the coverage." Where did mom run off to? Why? What has she been up to? Andresen-Anderson is too busy asking questions to feel too sorry for what his editor calls "your total failure to become a famous writer." There are hints of Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys as Hill, by way of his narrative lead, wrestles alternately converging and fugitive stories onto the page, stories that range from the fjords of Norway to the streets of "Czechago" in the heady summer of 1968. There are also hints of Pynchon, though, as Hill gently lampoons advertising culture, publishing, academia, politics, and everything in between. A grand entertainment, smart and well-paced, and a book that promises good work to come.
