A review by lisabee
The Nix by Nathan Hill
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
The book upset me. I am aware that this may say more about me than the book, so there is that. The two stars reflects my personal experience with the book. Below, I explain my whys.
From the reviews, I expected to find something literately interesting. I felt I found something puerile. Would make a great Simpsons sort of cartoon series. Which is fine, but I want more warning that this is what we are doing.
A. The author creates characters that are rather pure examples of stereotypes. So perhaps this is why some compare him to Charles Dickens. You do get that sense of one-purpose figures. And none of the characters seem to really see or care about any other. No social. All selfishly chasing their own tails. But people are rarely so perfectly narcissistic, and interest for me is in human interaction and fate.
Exhibit 1: the evil student girl who is pure feelings of entitlement with no expended effort
Exhibit 2: the basement dwelling gamer-geek who almost kills himself by ignoring body needs for in-game existance.
Exhibit 3: the infatuated cop who wants to kill any competitor
Exhibit 4: the father who cannot love a child because of an action in the past
Exhibit 5: the evil liberal who exists only to "add heat" to situations and randomly save people
Exhibit 6: the protagonist who is only interested in the answer to why something was done to him, long ago.
Exhibit 7: the liberal woman who exhibited what I found to be a rather male interest in sex for sex's sake
There are more characters, equally one-sided, one-purposed.
B. The events in the characters' lives are too "plotted" and not affective enough. What do I mean? Things happened in the past, and characters claim to suffer because of them, but the writing does not make that suffering available to the reader. The events simply cause new events. Dan Brown territory without the thrill.
C. The author, late in the book, starts delivering little sermons to the reader, where before, it was basic varying character points of view. I am old fashioned and prefer a show, don't tell approach. Otherwise an author should write essays.
D. I was promised a story with the Scandinavian nisse - the Nix. But the original nisse is meaningful: a very old ancestor guardian, who can be pissed off, yes, but whose main purpose is to protect and conserve the property by requiring hard work and good care of the current inhabitants. You could do something interesting with that today in our world of plastics, carbon excess and energetic gluttony. In this book, the nisse is an evil spirit, eternally following you around the world, punishing you for a single bad action. WTF?
E. The whole political situations around the 1968 Democratic Convention and the 2011 Occupy Wall Street are just stage dressing. Nothing meaningful is said about either that I understood.
The book just pisses me off. I didn't learn anything new about anything. I didn't get to experience meaningful conflict or development. I didn't even get a proper fairy tale.
From the reviews, I expected to find something literately interesting. I felt I found something puerile. Would make a great Simpsons sort of cartoon series. Which is fine, but I want more warning that this is what we are doing.
A. The author creates characters that are rather pure examples of stereotypes. So perhaps this is why some compare him to Charles Dickens. You do get that sense of one-purpose figures. And none of the characters seem to really see or care about any other. No social. All selfishly chasing their own tails. But people are rarely so perfectly narcissistic, and interest for me is in human interaction and fate.
Exhibit 1: the evil student girl who is pure feelings of entitlement with no expended effort
Exhibit 2: the basement dwelling gamer-geek who almost kills himself by ignoring body needs for in-game existance.
Exhibit 3: the infatuated cop who wants to kill any competitor
Exhibit 4: the father who cannot love a child because of an action in the past
Exhibit 5: the evil liberal who exists only to "add heat" to situations and randomly save people
Exhibit 6: the protagonist who is only interested in the answer to why something was done to him, long ago.
Exhibit 7: the liberal woman who exhibited what I found to be a rather male interest in sex for sex's sake
There are more characters, equally one-sided, one-purposed.
B. The events in the characters' lives are too "plotted" and not affective enough. What do I mean? Things happened in the past, and characters claim to suffer because of them, but the writing does not make that suffering available to the reader. The events simply cause new events. Dan Brown territory without the thrill.
C. The author, late in the book, starts delivering little sermons to the reader, where before, it was basic varying character points of view. I am old fashioned and prefer a show, don't tell approach. Otherwise an author should write essays.
D. I was promised a story with the Scandinavian nisse - the Nix. But the original nisse is meaningful: a very old ancestor guardian, who can be pissed off, yes, but whose main purpose is to protect and conserve the property by requiring hard work and good care of the current inhabitants. You could do something interesting with that today in our world of plastics, carbon excess and energetic gluttony. In this book, the nisse is an evil spirit, eternally following you around the world, punishing you for a single bad action. WTF?
E. The whole political situations around the 1968 Democratic Convention and the 2011 Occupy Wall Street are just stage dressing. Nothing meaningful is said about either that I understood.
The book just pisses me off. I didn't learn anything new about anything. I didn't get to experience meaningful conflict or development. I didn't even get a proper fairy tale.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Abandonment