Six reasons why you should read The Nix
Here are six reasons why Nathan Hill's extraordinary first novel The Nix, should be added it to your reading list this Autumn.
An ambitious, sprawling, hilarious, moving and acidly satirical read, this debut novel explores fifty years of American history and American radical protest through the story of a son and the mother who left him as a child.
It moves from the rural Midwest of the 1960s, to New York City during Occupy Wall Street, back to Chicago in 1968 and, finally, to wartime Norway, home of the mysterious Nix.
Here are six reasons why we think you should add The Nix to your 'to be read' pile right now...
1. Nathan Hill has been compared to all of your favourite writers
The Nix has already been compared to the work of Pynchon, Foster Wallace, Franzen, Salinger, Chabon, Egan, Tartt, Eugenides and Dickens. Pretty heady company for a debut novelist.
2. Everybody's talking about it across the pond
An instant New York Times bestseller, The Nix received stellar reviews in the US which helped to propel it into the Amazon top ten before it was even published.
3. It’s hilarious
despite being an often dark and heart-breaking story of an abandoned child excavating his estranged mother's past, The Nix has also had us laughing out loud on public transport.
4. And it's painfully relevant
the Washington Post noted that 'Nathan Hill's dazzling debut novel opens with an assault on Governor Packer, a right-wing, anti-immigration presidential candidate, who may remind you of a certain reality TV star with size anxiety'.
5. It involves a Choose Your Own Adventure
Hill is such a great fan of choose-your-own-adventure stories that he's embedded one within a section of The Nix.
6. Anything that’s OK with Meryl Streep is fine with us
the Oscar-winning actress is reportedly teaming up with J.J. Abrams to create a TV adaptation of the novel.
The Nix
by Nathan Hill
A New York Times bestseller, this debut novel is a gloriously ambitious, witty and deeply touching story of fifty years of America and of American radical protest, a son, the mother who left him as a child, and how his search to uncover the secrets of her life leads him to reclaim his own.