My curiosity about the Nix piqued because the book claims that a Nix is a legendary shapeshifting Norwegian creature often presenting as a white horse, but being Norwegian myself, I had never heard of it. After some casual “googeling†on the topic, I found that the Nix was also referred to as “Nøkken,†which still didn’t seem to be the evil creature which my grandmother said could seize us if we played too far from the house after dark – no worries, it’s often dark before 4 p.m. in Norway, and it wasn’t child neglect to play outside!
Still, this was not enough to take on a book of over 600 pages, until it came across my path as an audio book, and I decided to take a chance on this debut novelist who had caused quite a buzz at the Sanibel Writer’s Conference the year it was published.
I have to admit I have a love/hate relationship with this book, and had I not had the audio version of it, I doubt I would have read more than a few chapters, but that would have been a shame.
The story about Samuel Andresen-Anderson, and the intertwining of story of his mother in present time and the sixties, is a good one, as is his lingering love for Bethany, and his loyalty to her unfortunate brother, whose story could have been a book in itself. Both storylines are fraught with misunderstandings, secrecy, the awkwardness of youth, and readers have front row views of the horrifying ease at which a person’s actions can be misconstrued, and reputations irrevocably mutilated.
I wished the author could have spared me some gory descriptions mainly related to young boy’s discovery of their own sexuality, copious body fluids (yikes, fast forward), and Officer Brown’s obsession with Fay’s college friend, although the latter comes full circle as an obsessed and damaged person’s motivation’s become clear. There is also an obsession with gaming hiding in the protagonist’s psyche, but as much as characters ought to be as flawed as the rest of us, I felt this was a distraction from a book which already requires a lot of attention to keep up with different point of view characters, their time frames, and twisting storylines.
In the end, I must say that Nathan Hill is an excellent writer, and hopefully next time he will pour his creative storytelling into more than one volume.
Nathan Hill’s agent is Emily Forland of the Brandt & Hochman Agency, and the book was published by Knopf Publishers.
It’s been several years since I met Nathan Hill and bought his book at a reading festival in Fort Meyers. I found the book captivating especially his interactions with the female student who wanted a good grade without earning it. I passed it on to my daughter who has two young children and she said, “she adored it.†I think listening to it on tape might have made it difficult to follow. My book club gave it mixed reviews. I plan to reread it in the future.
Thank you for commenting, and for reminding me about the storyline concerning the student causing such havoc over not getting the grade she wanted when she did nothing to deserve it. It’s another example of how quickly life can turn upside down without warning, and for a rediculous reason. Nathan Hill demonstrates these type of situations wonderfully, and there is true depth to his storytelling which is particularly clear in the end when he does tie up all the loose ends suprisingly neatly. In spite of my love/hate reaction to this book, I look forward to his next one, and I might actually read this one, instead of listening to it.