Book Reviews
There is an accidental topicality in Hill’s debut, about an estranged mother and son whose fates hinge on two mirror-image political events—the Democratic Convention of 1968 and the Republican Convention of 2004. But beyond that hook lies a high-risk, high-reward playfulness with structure and tone: comic set-pieces, digressions into myth, and formal larks that call to mind Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad.
New York Magazine
(Starred reivew.) [A]n ironic view of 21st-century elections, education, pop culture, and marketing, with flashbacks to 1988, 1968, and 1944..... Hill skillfully blends humor and darkness, imagery and observation. .... [in] this rich, lively take on American social conflict.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred reivew.) When Samuel Andreson-Anderson was growing up, his mother... [told] him "the things you love the most will one day hurt you the worst."... Offering engrossing prose, multiple interlocking stories, and deftly drawn characters, Hill shows us how the interlinked consequences of our actions can feel like fate. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
(Starred reivew.) Place Nathan Hill’s engrossing, skewering, and preternaturally timely tale beside the novels of Tom Wolfe, John Irving, Donna Tartt, and Michael Chabon. . . . Cartwheeling among multiple narrators, The Nix spins the galvanizing stories of three generations derailed in unexpected ways. . . . Hill takes aim at hypocrisy, greed, misogyny, addiction, and vengeance with edgy humor and deep empathy in a whiplashing mix of literary artistry and compulsive readability.
Booklist
(Starred reivew.) Sparkling, sweeping debut novel that takes in a large swath of recent American history and pop culture and turns them on their sides.... Hill gently lampoons advertising culture, publishing, academia, politics, and everything in between. A grand entertainment, smart and well-paced, and a book that promises good work to come.
Kirkus Reviews