The Nix

After his mother Fay abandoned the family when he was a boy, Samuel Anderson grew up to become a failed writer, bored English professor, and hopeless gaming addict. However, when Fay becomes a brief cause celebre after throwing rocks at a controversial presidential candidate, Samuel is encouraged/threatened by his media-savvy publisher to get her story. Though reluctant at first to reconnect, Samuel eventually begins to search for answers, a journey that sees him research Fay’s midwestern roots, unlikely late-1960s student activism, and the titular Nix, a supposed family curse that followed Fay’s father from Norway.

The Nix may be Hill’s debut novel, but at times it reads like an accomplished author’s magnum opus. It satirically savages everything from grandstanding reactionary politicians to socially inept gamers to self-absorbed hippies to entitled millennial college students, often with hilarious results, and the stylistic shifts that accommodate these different perspectives are spot-on. However, the book does this without relying on mere caricature. Hill’s characters are often more complex than they seem, and even the most antagonistic or vile among them (such as a student who resolves to get Samuel fired after he busts her for plagiarism or a cop-turned-judge with a deep-seated grudge) are given some sympathetic edges.

That depth of characterization also extends to the Andersons, whose mysteries – Why did Fay leave? Why is Samuel such a jaded washout? How did the family curse come about? – are revealed gradually. Hill uses digression frequently and often to good effect (witness the woes of Samuel’s gamer friend Pwnage), but between that and the book’s frequent hops across place (Iowa to Chicago to New York) and time (the present to the 1960s to the early 2000s), The Nix is guaranteed to try some readers’ patience. For those who stick with it until the end, there is a definite payoff in seeing how the pieces come together.

If there is one thing that does mark The Nix as a first novel, it is a certain amount of unevenness. At times, it feels excessive. Hill often posses Fay’s (and Samuel’s) trials and tribulations against historical backdrops, and both the violence of the 1968 Democratic National Convention riots and cameos from the likes of Walter Cronkite and Allen Ginsberg felt gratuitous. On the opposite end of the spectrum, parts of the ending came across as too neatly packaged.

Sharply witty yet achingly sincere, The Nix is an auspicious debut and an engrossing family saga that is well worth the time invested in it.

8.75/10