Hello friends! Happy Monday, today I’m going to be posting my review of Nathan Hill’s novel The Nix.

Funny story before I dive in. I was talking to my co-worker about this book and at the time I was 400 pages in, and I was telling her I didn’t know why the story was called ‘The Nix’. She goes, well maybe you’ll find out on page 500… sure enough it was like page 503 or something and it’s described why it’s called ‘the nix’ and I was like, holy damn she was right!
I hope that doesn’t discourage anyone from reading this because it was still a gorgeous book, and if you read the synopsis on Goodreads, I’m sure it talks about why the story is called the Nix.

The Nix by: Nathan Hill: The Nix, the notion of loving something or someone so much that it hurts the most in the end, happened for Samuel when he was eleven years old when his mother left him, but unbeknownst to him it happened years before when his mother left her family in Iowa to go to Chicago, and even before that when her father left Norway for America. Now, set on a quest to find out his family history, Samuel learns about his family in the most unexpected ways. This multi-generational story was so riveting and just the amount of detail that Hill puts into, not only his plots, but his characters is astounding. The reader can get lost in this story as one part will be set in a year, but he’ll take you through each character, even characters who feel like they don’t really have a significance play a part and it’s so well done. At times, it did feel a little much the amount of detail Hill provided because some chapters really started to feel bogged down by prose, but for the most part he balanced everything well so that the reader was constantly engaged. The overall theme of the nix folklore was so apparent in so many generations and the fact that Hill brought all his characters together through this theme was really well done. This novel wasn’t anything extraordinary, but it was so much fun to read and dive into a story very well told.