Book Review: "The Nix" by Nathan Hill
Publisher Synopsis: It’s 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson hasn’t seen his mother, Faye, in decades—not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she’s reappeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news and inflames a politically 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.
To save her, Samuel will have to embark on his own journey, uncovering long-buried secrets about the woman he thought he knew, secrets that stretch across generations and have their origin all the way back in Norway, home of the mysterious Nix. As he does so, Samuel will confront not only Faye’s losses but also his own lost love, and will relearn everything he thought he knew about his mother, and himself.
Rating (out of 5): 5
Review: I primarily read this book on the New York City subway, and I found myself wishing my commute was longer so I could keep reading. I’m not sure what higher praise I could give this book, except to say that even though it clocks in at a hefty 732 pages, I still lugged it with me on the train every day.
However, even attempting to describe this book is tough. There are flashbacks to the ‘60s in Iowa and Chicago, the ‘80s in Illinois; commentaries on millennial entitlement (…hmph!) and video game addiction, politics and pop culture, cell phone addiction and social media…it was a lot.
The novel’s name comes from one of the Nordic spirits that Faye’s father, an immigrant from Norway, describes to her as a young girl. The Nix often appears as a white horse that steals children away. However, in Hill’s novel, a Nix is depicted as anything you love that leaves suddenly, taking a piece of your heart with it.
“The Nix” kicks off in 2011 with a weird crime committed against a right-wing politician (who I honestly have nostalgia for given the state of American politics in 2019). The perpetrator? Faye, a 60-something woman who abandoned her husband and young son 20-something years ago. We then meet her son Samuel, a failed novelist who teaches Literature at a random college in the Illinois suburbs and spends far too many hours of his life playing an elfish-based video game. (He’s more successful at the video game that his job.) When he discovers that it’s his mother who committed the crime and that she’s facing charges, he jumps at the chance to save his literary reputation by writing a tell-all about the “Packer Attacker,” as the media has dubbed his mother.
Apologies for summarizing the beginning of the novel again, but it’s important to set the stage for the rest of the story. Along the way, we meet one of Samuel’s students, Laura, who has been cheating her way through school for so long that she doesn’t know how to succeed without doing so. She just knows she has to fulfill her destiny of becoming a successful businesswoman. (Perhaps she’ll finally find the elusive “Businesswomen’s Special.”) She craves the validation of her classmates, and doesn’t know what she’s feeling without the help of a social media app. Eventually, her quest to succeed at all costs leads her to take on the university, insisting that Samuel’s classroom isn’t a “safe space” (another commentary on “trigger warnings.”)
We also meet one of Samuel’s video game compatriots, who is known to us only by his video game name, Pwnage. Pwnage’s life has sunk so deep into the video game that his wife has left him, he’s lost his job, and he’s constantly planning to start a diet plan, if only he could find the right day. I’ve never played World of Warcraft but I imagine it was the inspiration for the video game Elfscape. Interestingly, Pwnage frames Samuel’s journey to discover who his mother really is in terms of a video game (a quest, an obstacle, a puzzle, etc), and helps Samuel discover a key piece of the puzzle along the way. Even though he wasn’t the main focus of the book, I did find Pwnage’s chapters fascinating as they were written in a stream of consciousness style that really helped me understand the somewhat manic state of his mind as his video game addiction intensified.
For me, the meatiest parts of the book were the flashbacks to Samuel’s childhood in suburban Illinois, and the flashbacks to Faye’s adolescence in Iowa, and then Chicago. As a 12-year-old, Samuel meets twins who live nearby, both of whom change the course of his life in different ways. But, I don’t want to give away too much! The twins are very different, and of course Samuel falls in love with one of them, who reappears in his life later, which is written like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book that doesn’t really have multiple options.
We also come to better understand the backstory of Faye’s relationship with her husband (and Samuel’s father) Henry. the descriptions of a late-60s Home Ec classroom was fairly depressing but not surprising—the instructor teaching the young women how to clean a toilet while they watched their male classmates play baseball.
The book’s climactic scene details the 1968 riots of the DNC convention in Chicago, and Faye’s involvement—and eventually reveals why she abandoned her family and subsequently attacked the right-wing politician.
One of my favorite lines, spoken by Samuel’s editor: “It’s no secret that the great American pastime is no longer baseball. It’s sanctimony.”
There was another passage that particularly resonated with me, in which Samuel reflects on how he and his father bonded over traveling into Chicago for Cubs games.
Broadcasts on WGN weekday afternoons, Samuel literally praying to God—on his knees on the couch looking up to the ceiling—praying and crossing his fingers while actually making deals with God in exchange for one home run, one late-inning victory, one winning season.
Funnily enough, “The Nix” was published on August 30 2016; just 9.5 weeks later, the Cubs would win their first World Series in 108 years. (Not anything to do with the book per se, just a fun fact, as I also have gone on several baseball trips to Chicago with my dad.)
Anyway, I don’t want to give too much away, but I highly recommend this book. Hill’s writing is vivid and funny as he takes us on quite a journey, and somehow keeps it both energetic and witty, like no time has passed as you’re reading it.
Trigger Warnings: sexual abuse, Iraq war imagery
TL;DR: If you’re looking for a broad-ranging novel that takes you on a journey from the ‘60s in Iowa to the ‘80s in Illinois, to modern-day Norway and the US, with funny and engaging prose, read this one! (Honestly I don’t know how else to summarize this one quickly.)
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