As The Nix, the ambitious debut novel from Naples, Fla., writer Nathan Hill, opens, Samuel Anderson is in crisis. Samuel strikes a new deal with his publisher: he’ll deliver a scathing biography of his estranged mother, in return for forgiveness of his long-spent advance. And with an extended cameo from poet and radical Allen Ginsberg, it’s a rich buffet of a novel. Hill’s attempt to tie up all the stories — and tie them together — results in a wheezing creak of authorial intervention. There is much to savour in The Nix, and Hill should be fully credited for his heedlessness.

Source: thestar August 28, 2016 03:56 UTC