The book I started the year with was The Nix. It has been recently translated into Polish and my literary adviser said – Read it! It is fun, it's amazing! Even if it is a debut, I loved it! Laughed out loud! His wife and my dear friend confirmed that while Raf was reading the book she frequently heard laughter coming from his room. After the serious reading of several of Ishiguro novels, I thought it was time for something different. Something lighter. The Nix seemed to be an answer to my reading needs. Another big book. The number of 620 seems to be repeated in many reviews. I am not sure why the arithmetic is so important in relation to this book. It seems to be more important than it is with others. Hmm…
My first impression was – it is a well-written book. It reads easily, it is somewhat fun. However, the fun part is disputable. I have read the book in English so I am not sure how Polish translation could be funnier. There are general opinions, however, of the book being hilarious. Not too me. It is not that I did not understand the author’s intentions, but what was meant to be funny, I found, in a way, depressing. It either made fun of people in psychological trouble or showed the problems with political correctness that at times leads to radicular situations and harmful to the society. Well, it was not only the subjects that stopped me from enjoying the fun parts of the book it was also a style with which it was presented. Not my type of sense of humour. This is, of course, subjective and cannot be taken as a negative of the book, but it has a lot to do with my personal perception and assessment of the book.
The storyline was promising and it caught my interest right from the beginning, as it was intended. For the first 300 pages, I was looking forward to the resolutions of the mysteries presented to the readers. And they are quite a few. I found one of the comments in Goodreads particularly apt and amusing:
Somebody writes:
And the answer of Matt:
“ by the time you find out, you will have ceased caring”
And this is how the book is. Too much of everything. Too many storylines that get suspended for pages and pages. Too many characters that are described in big details. I must say it is done well, but too much is too much. The book reminds me of an excessively dressed up woman. She is pretty and the dress has many pretty elements. It has frills, sequins, pompoms, roses, violets, several patterns on the skirt: checks, lines, figures of children and cupids and many other adornments. One can imagine that the overall look is not good. It is a little bit like this with this book for me.
It is not elegant writing. After Ishiguro’s constraint style I will be difficult to please in the writing elegance department.
Nathan Hill says that he wrote the book for himself as he did not expect it to be ever published. It was ten years of the author’s fun. It looks a bit like asking for admiration to me. It did not work with me. But generally, the reviews of the book are very good. It is an easy book to read, but this is not enough for me to classify it as a good book. This one needs serious pruning on several fronts. This way the readers could have more fun. At least some of us.
Not all the cliffhangers are explained satisfactorily. The story of Bethany and Samuel is really unconvincing to me and in so many respects that it discredited Nathan Hill in my eyes. The love stories in the book are really unconvincing, but the sex scenes are many and rather detailed. It looks like even if Nathan Hill was writing a book for his own pleasure, he did quite a lot to ensure that a wide spectrum of readers finds it pleasurable as well.
At the end of the book, there is time for some wisdom to pass on to the readers. It starts to read like a self-help book. There is the story of blind people getting to know an elephant by touch and they get a different idea of what an elephant is. They touch different parts of the animal. The moral: don’t jump to conclusions too early. Or “seeing ourselves clearly is the project of the lifetime”. Nothing wrong with that. I even like the one about seeing myself clearly very much. What is a bit strange is the condensation of the wisdom bits on the last pages.
Well, I sort of liked the book and I think that the writer may have the future, he certainly has followers already. With some more life experience and discipline in writing, he could be a really interesting writer.
Between 3 and 4 out of 5 for me.
