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Gerhard's Reviews > The Nix
The Nix
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God, it took Nathan Hill a decade to write this, and I devoured it in like a week. I mean eating, sleeping The Nix. Waking up at fucking 02:00 'cos I was dreaming about it and had to read for another hour. At least. No doubt about it, this is a Zeitgeist novel like Underworld, Catch-22, Slaughterhouse 5. It's been derided as self-indulgent and too coyly stepping in the footsteps of Franzen and DFW. I honestly think this is more cogent and less self-aware, a deliberately 'old school' narrative that eschews PoMo/experimentalism for old-fashioned cause-and-effect storytelling. Despite the length, taut and thriller-like. Utterly magnificent, and soul-changing. (This from a South African grappling with revolutionary/right wing fallout in this day and age.)
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Quotes Gerhard Liked
“It’s the great flaw of journalism. The more something happens, the less newsworthy it is.”
― The Nix
― The Nix
“What a treacherous thing a body was, how it so blatantly acted out the mind’s secrets.”
― The Nix
― The Nix
“A dormitory was a hopeless idea. Whoever thought of encasing two hundred girls in a concrete box?”
― The Nix
― The Nix
“He’s like the most dangerous species of American there is: heterosexual white male who didn’t get what he wanted.”
― The Nix
― The Nix
“That, paradoxically, narrowing her concerns had made her more capable of love and generosity and empathy and, yes, even peace and justice. It was the difference between loving something out of duty—because the movement required it of you—and loving something you actually loved. Love—real, genuine, unasked-for love—made room for more of itself, it turned out. Love, when freely given, duplicates and multiplies.”
― The Nix
― The Nix
“about eighty percent of what you believe about yourself when you’re twenty turns out to be wrong. The problem is you don’t know what your small true part is until much later.”
― The Nix
― The Nix
“People love each other for many reasons, not all of them good,â€� she said. “They love each other because it’s easy. Or because they’re used to it. Or because they’ve given up. Or because they’re scared. People can be a Nix for each other.”
― The Nix
― The Nix
Reading Progress
January 1, 2017
– Shelved
January 1, 2017
– Shelved as:
to-read
April 30, 2017
–
Started Reading
May 7, 2017
– Shelved as:
2017
May 7, 2017
– Shelved as:
favorites
May 7, 2017
–
Finished Reading
February 21, 2019
– Shelved as:
literary-fiction
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Sharon
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May 08, 2017 02:41AM
I keep looking at this but moving on to the next read because I'm on a deadline for reading and writing reviews, but I'm going to have to do it now...great review
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Sharon, it is a surprisingly quick read given the length, accelerating towards the end, as the chapters get shorter. The real strength here is the characterisation; Hill interweaves past and present to give us a multi-faceted view of his initial set-up. (The truth is both heartbreaking and exhilarating, no mean feat.) Obviously written before Brexit/Trump, but the book is a remarkably prescient skewering of our current world, which is why I called it a zeitgeist novel. One of those books that creeps unexpectedly into your heart and head.
Oh sounds wonderful...I can't wait to read it. Thankyou so much for such a lovely and compelling review
