The Nix: Nathan Hill - Softcover

Hill, Nathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451494253 ISBN 13: 9780451494252

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2016

Synopsis

Samuel Andresen-Anderson hasn't seen his mother, Faye, since she walked out when he was a child. But then one day there she is, all over the news, throwing rocks at a presidential candidate. Samuel will rethink everything he ever knew about his mother - a woman with an epic story of her own, a story she kept hidden from the world.

About this title

Review:

Amother-son psychodrama with ghosts and politics, but it s also a tragicomedy about anger and sanctimony in America. . . .Nathan Hill is a maestro. John Irving
A fantastic novel about love, betrayal, politics and pop culture as good as the best Michael Chabon or Jonathan Franzen. People
It broke my heart, this book. Time after time. It made me laugh just as often. I loved it on the first page as powerfully as I did on the last. Jason Sheehan, NPR.org
Funny, endlessly inventive. . . . [a] wild tragicomic tangle of [Hill s] imagination. Entertainment Weekly (A-)
Hill has so much talent to burn that he can pull of just about any style, imagine himself into any person and convincingly portray any place or time. The Nix is hugely entertaining and unfailingly smart, and the author seems incapable of writing a pedestrian sentence or spinning a boring story. . . . [A] supersize and audacious novel of American misadventure. Teddy Wayne, The New York Times Book Review
Irresistible. . . . A major new comic novelist . . . . Hill is a sharp social observer, hyper-alert to the absurdities of modern life. . . . his enormous book arrives as one of the stars of the fall season. . . . readers will find this novel. And they ll be dazzled. Ron Charles, The Washington Post
Hill is an uncommonly profound observer, illuminating much about the relationships between parents and children.. . . Nathan Hill is an important new writer, able to variously make readers laugh out loud while providing a melancholy, resonant tale. Eliot Schrefer, USA Today (4/4 Stars)
"[A] great sprawling feast of a first novel. . . . Hill writes with an astonishingly sure hand for a young author. . . . let's just call him the real thing." Dan Cryer, Newsday

From the Hardcover edition."

If any novel defied an elevator pitch in 2016, it wasThe Nix. Acid critique of millennial entitlement, videogame addiction, and clueless academia; tender meditation on childhood friendship, first loves, and maternal abandonment; handy tutorial on 60s radicalism and Norwegian ghost mythology: Nathan Hill s magnificently overstuffed debut contains multitudes, and then some. . . . the story surges, ricocheting from sleepy 80s suburbia and the 1968 DNC riots to WWII-era Norway, post-9/11 Iraq, and beyond. It s not just that Hill is a brilliantly surreal social satirist in the gonzo mode of Don DeLillo or Thomas Pynchon (a male news anchor s face is smooth as cake fondant; one doomed union is like a spoon married to a garbage disposal ), it s that he does it all with so much wit and style and heart. Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly (Best Book of 2016)
A fantastic novel about love, betrayal, politics and pop culture as good as the best Michael Chabon or Jonathan Franzen. People
It broke my heart, this book. Time after time. It made me laugh just as often. I loved it on the first page as powerfully as I did on the last. Jason Sheehan, NPR.org
Funny, endlessly inventive. . . . [a] wild tragicomic tangle of [Hill s] imagination. Entertainment Weekly (A-)
Hill has so much talent to burn that he can pull of just about any style, imagine himself into any person and convincingly portray any place or time. The Nix is hugely entertaining and unfailingly smart, and the author seems incapable of writing a pedestrian sentence or spinning a boring story. . . . [A] supersize and audacious novel of American misadventure. Teddy Wayne, The New York Times Book Review
Irresistible. . . . A major new comic novelist . . . . Hill is a sharp social observer, hyper-alert to the absurdities of modern life. . . . his enormous book arrives as one of the stars of the fall season. . . . readers will find this novel. And they ll be dazzled. Ron Charles, The Washington Post
Hill is an uncommonly profound observer, illuminating much about the relationships between parents and children.. . . Nathan Hill is an important new writer, able to variously make readers laugh out loud while providing a melancholy, resonant tale. Eliot Schrefer, USA Today (4/4 Stars)
"[A] great sprawling feast of a first novel. . . . Hill writes with an astonishingly sure hand for a young author. . . . let's just call him the real thing." Dan Cryer, Newsday"

"If any novel defied an elevator pitch in 2016, it was The Nix. Acid critique of millennial entitlement, videogame addiction, and clueless academia; tender meditation on childhood friendship, first loves, and maternal abandonment; handy tutorial on '60s radicalism and Norwegian ghost mythology: Nathan Hill's magnificently overstuffed debut contains multitudes, and then some. . . . the story surges, ricocheting from sleepy '80s suburbia and the 1968 DNC riots to WWII-era Norway, post-9/11 Iraq, and beyond. It's not just that Hill is a brilliantly surreal social satirist in the gonzo mode of Don DeLillo or Thomas Pynchon (a male news anchor's face is 'smooth as cake fondant'; one doomed union is 'like a spoon married to a garbage disposal'), it's that he does it all with so much wit and style and heart." --Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly (Best Book of 2016)
"A fantastic novel about love, betrayal, politics and pop culture--as good as the best Michael Chabon or Jonathan Franzen." --People
"It broke my heart, this book. Time after time. It made me laugh just as often. I loved it on the first page as powerfully as I did on the last." --Jason Sheehan, NPR.org
"Funny, endlessly inventive. . . . [a] wild tragicomic tangle of [Hill's] imagination." --Entertainment Weekly (A-)
"Hill has so much talent to burn that he can pull of just about any style, imagine himself into any person and convincingly portray any place or time. The Nix is hugely entertaining and unfailingly smart, and the author seems incapable of writing a pedestrian sentence or spinning a boring story. . . . [A] supersize and audacious novel of American misadventure." --Teddy Wayne, The New York Times Book Review
"Irresistible. . . . A major new comic novelist . . . . Hill is a sharp social observer, hyper-alert to the absurdities of modern life. . . . his enormous book arrives as one of the stars of the fall season. . . . readers will find this novel. And they'll be dazzled." --Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Hill is an uncommonly profound observer, illuminating much about the relationships between parents and children. . . . Nathan Hill is an important new writer, able to variously make readers laugh out loud while providing a melancholy, resonant tale." --Eliot Schrefer, USA Today (4/4 Stars)
"[A] great sprawling feast of a first novel. . . . Hill writes with an astonishingly sure hand for a young author. . . . let's just call him the real thing." --Dan Cryer, Newsday

From the Author:

Nathan Hill's short stories have appeared in many literary journals, including The Iowa Review, AGNI, The Gettysburg Review, and Fiction, where he was awarded the annual Fiction Prize. A native Iowan, he now lives with his wife in Naples, Florida. The Nix is his first novel.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0451494253
• ISBN 13: 9780451494252
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 640