The Nix has been my surprise read of 2024, so far. What drew me to it was the promise of a family mystery. Samuel’s mother walked out on the family when he was a boy. They never heard from her again. But, two chapters in, I was on the point of abandoning it. Adult Samuel, an academic, is secretly playing the video game Elfscape, late at night in his university office. Fantasy fiction and video games – this is not for me, I thought. But I persisted.
The book is impossible to summarise and this isn’t intended as a review. Suffice to say, it’s an expansive state-of-America novel; a satire that also has a heart. At its centre is the affecting story of a broken family. In order to see how those individuals have been pulled apart by sweeps of history, we get involved the in 1968 Chicago riots and protests, have a glimpse of the German occupation of Norway. Along the way Samuel falls victim to contemporary concerns: cancel culture in academia, a presidential election, the absurdities of the publishing industry, and the Occupy Wall Street protests. It’s also about writing and storytelling – you’ll encounter Scandinavian folk tales (the Nix of the title.) Apart from the Elfscape moments (these are short, I speed read them) each section, the time shifts, held me, an absorbed reader. Sentence by sentence Hill’s prose drew me in. The writing is digressive but Hill knows how to control a sentence. I was never bored.
How did Nathan Hill manage to stitch together this patchwork of a novel? I sensed some of the material might once have been attempts at short stories. It turns out that is the case. It took Nathan Hill 10 years to complete The Nix.
Of note, then, is the idea that maybe you shouldn’t be too hasty in abandoning those short stories you never finished. You may have snippets of memoir or a burning issue of the day you really want to write about. If you have material lying around that still has some life in it and issues you really want to get stuck into, perhaps the way forward is to play around with the writing that has energy until you find a thread that might stitch it all together into a brand new and compelling whole.
Pamela Johnson, March 2024
Blue Door Press 