Interesting. I just finished a sci-fi book by John Scalzi and really thought that even though most of the important characters are female, they were really just boys. I didn’t feel that way here.
I liked the Pwnage chapter, we’ve got a gamer kid. He hasn’t gone over the edge, but one sometimes worries he could. Same kid also read a fair number of “Choose your Adventure” books, so that part of the book really tickled me.
Agree with Mary the Ginsburg stuff should have been tossed.
Re: the Pwnage stuff, I was wondering if anyone has read Ready, Player One? It’s a dystopian novel (also a movie) about escaping into the internet because the world is super awful, and I just kept getting reminded of that.
Running away/being in fantasy/escaping reality is a huge theme of this book!
I ususally read and listen to our book club books. When I finished The Nix, I thought it was good, worth reading, but I couldn’t say I loved it. My husband always asks me it I think he would like our selections and I thought he would like The Nix. He decided to read it and he really liked it. I heard him chuckling through a lot of it. Since he was more enthusiastic than me, I decided to listen to it again. I’ll confess to listening really fast to the Pwnage and Laura Pottsdam sections. Those sections didn’t capture me. I did like the book better on my second listen. I even appreciated more of the humor the second time through. The first time through I was frustrated by what seemed stereotypical behavior for some of the characters. I was also frustrated by some very tedious passages that were annoying to read (Pwnage and Pottsdam 
). The second time I just enjoyed the story.
I assume the name Faye was done with purpose. Faye means fairy. That’s a good name for a nix.
@Caraid that’s so funny that your husband liked it better than you. Mine reads so fast, that he usually powers through slow stuff, but he’s not into literary fiction. He said the book reminded him of *Infinite Jest/i, but it wasn’t as good. I said, it was just that he liked tennis better than computer games.
Hmm. As usual, I did audio. I’m not sure I could’ve plowed through the tree book version.
The narrator had me laughing & cringing re: Laura and Pwnage. Two side characters in the book who received a lot of stage time, were, IMO, the best parts of the audio version.
But, sadly, I was not buying what the author was selling. None of the characters or story lines really grabbed me. I didn’t particularly like or identify with any of the characters. I think I had my hopes pinned on Faye – that her “real” story, once revealed (finally!), would blow me away & she’d be the redeemed hero of the book, but…eh…she wasn’t.
Another one of my (many) objections is Samuel’s obsession with Bethany. The author seems to be making the case that age 11 was a big one for Samuel. Life-changing. But I can’t buy that a crush at age 11 lasts well into adulthood, as if Samuel never dates a single girl or falls in love from age 11 to 30-something?
Big picture, the book got me thinking about how seemingly random incidents can dramatically alter the trajectory of your life. Also, that everyone has wounds & suffers. <—however, nothing new there about the human condition.
@mathmom, when you mentioned up thread that you had differing views of the book in your house, I was wondering if it was between you and your husband. I chuckled this morning when I saw that you guys were the opposite of us. Although, I think I liked it a little better than your husband did.
Did anyone guess that Periwinkle was Sebastian? I did not see that coming at all. I was thinking that perhaps Sebastian was Samuel’s real father, but not this. I think I was picturing Periwinkle much younger, but he was described as being the same age as Samuel’s father.
There were so many exaggerated characters and moments in the novel that I was glad for Bethany, who stayed true to her musical passion and ultimately stayed connected to Samuel in a real way. Her music was such a contrast to Molly Miller, and the whole “you’ve got to represent” thing.
I never guessed Sebastian became Periwinkle and it seems a stretch to get from one to the other - or rather an indulgence on the author’s part.
And speaking of Samuel’s father: what an ill-defined character. I assume he loved Faye but why?
And then Faye’s father: his big secret is that he left a pregnant girl behind in Norway and headed to America? Why was he so intent on flying under the radar - not drawing attention to himself or family - years later in his small U.S.A. hometown?
The Nix and I did not get along. I don’t particularly like the characters, but worse I think the characters/actions make little sense.
Faye and the bag picked up at the pharmacy for her classmate - please - who ordered it? Just pick it up in a different town? Could that plot device be more convoluted? I’ve watched soap operas that wouldn’t have touched that one. Please.
Just so much unneeded with the end result being that the central story got lost. Think Laura Potsdam, Pwnage, Elfscape. Think Humphrey, Cronkite, Ginsberg. Think the bullying episode where Bishop locks his classmate in a stairwell surrounded by pornography. (Though, I did wonder where Bishop had such access to it.) Even Bishop’s time in Iraq could have been omitted.
Kirkus Reviews calls The Nix a “sparkling, sweeping debut novel.” Remember how NewJerseyTheatreMom vetoed any novel described as sweeping. Maybe she was on to something. I’m considering the same.
I found Faye’s time in Chicago of interest but other than that - no. :-q
I read The Nix in December as an ebook from the library, so don’t have a copy to refer to. I did make a few notes but a large share of the details have escaped my mind.
For the first few chapters I kept thinking, whose writing style does this remind me of? And it finally hit me - Tom Wolfe. The extensive run on descriptions, the look into characters’ minds, the rolling stone of injustice - once I thought of him, he was in my mind throughout. The whole downward trajectory of Samuel’s academic career reminded me greatly of Bonfire of the Vanities. And the immersion into video games was reminiscent of The Right Stuff’s flying descriptions.
I enjoyed this for quite a lot of the book, but the closer to the end, the less I liked it. It was darker and darker; it seemed like everyone was set up to eventually fail. In the end I was dissatisfied.
I did appreciate understanding the feeling of playing video games in the earlier chapters, since DS spent much of his younger years in front of Mario and Sonic. I used to watch him successfully navigate through fascinating worlds. It gave me insight into the appeal and the idea of control and success in a virtual world that might be missing in the real world. I liked the way it showed how to apply the lessons of video gaming to real life. However…I described some of that to DS and showed him some passages and he got quite upset over the way gaming was depicted. He thought is was totally unrealistic and stereotyped. And hated the idea of death by computer game.
Two other random thoughts from my notes: I thought the book painted great visual pictures - I appreciated the passage of driving from Chicago into Iowa, having done that a few times. I also liked the wish that real life could be more like Choose your Own Adventure (DS did read those kind of books) but found the font hard to read.
I found the first 100 pages of this novel very tough to read. After that it improved but I came close to tossing it a bunch of times. I couldn’t decide whether it was supposed to be Samuel or Sebastian who was Faye’s Nix—oe both of them?
With the fake news Sebastian was paid to create, reminds me of these current days
@Midwest67 I was musing about your post and came to the conclusion that a fundamental portion of the book seems to be predicated on the timing of Alice’s discovery of her true sexuality. How much would’ve changed had she waited a few days to break off with Officer Brown or done it much earlier before Faye had come to his notice?
@Marilyn, my husband also mentioned The Nix reminding him of Bonfire of the Vanities.
Another theme? Everybody has a secret.
I agree. I think a crush can leave an indelible mark, and even subtly influence who you choose as your next love interest, but Samuel’s obsession was too much. Also, I thought Bethany was a tiny bit creepy. I mean, she did conspire with Bishop to kill the principal, right? He may have justly deserved his end, but having it orchestrated by two 11-year olds was unsettling.
You’re right! At one point, we were reading a lot of male authors and made a concerted effort to shift to female/minority, but I hadn’t realized how far the pendulum had swung.
I was absolutely sure that Sebastian was going to turn out to be Samuel’s father, so I was actually pleased to have guessed wrong. At least I think I’m wrong. Was there any lingering mystery about that?
Here again, I was wrong. I thought maybe he killed somebody. He was not a warm and fuzzy guy. His treatment of Faye after the pharmacy incident was abominable, and the bomb shelter was strange, too. I thought it would turn out to have some special meaning, but it didn’t.
The Nix is going to be a mini-series with Meryl Streep:
Lots more in this interview besides that: http://bookanista.com/nathan-hill/
Mary, that information is from 2016 and there doesn’t seem to be anything more recent, so it probably never made it out of development. Meryl Streep is going to be in the next season of Big Little Lies.
^ Well, now I just feel bad for Nathan Hill’s mom. 
I did not like this book. It was just okay. I really did not like the first 150 pages or so. The end was fine. I can’t believe that it made the “Best Books of 2016” lists. I really don’t see it as having staying power. I was hoping for so much more.
One line at the end of the book that really struck me was “Sometimes we’re so wrapped up in our own story that we don’t see how we’re supporting characters in someone else’s.”
Faye is my age. I remember the Chicago riots but it was an interesting representation of the other side of the event.
I could never, never abandon my child. I just couldn’t. No matter how much was explained – or not explained-- about that, I didn’t understand. I think that is why I didn’t really connect with the book. I probably connected with Samuel the most. I detested Laura.
How much was explained or not explained? I like that.
For much of the book, my brain was trying to fill in the blanks about Faye and I was looking forward to finally learning the details. The big reveal was not so revealing after all.
Did others feel this way as well?
Upthread someone asked about connecting the dots between Sebastian & Periwinkle. No. I didn’t see that coming.