(4/22/2023)
Wow! (Sigh.) Wow! (Sigh.) Oh, wait. This is a book review. I should use real words to describe it. Let's see...Genius. Astounding. Mind-boggling. An absolute must-read. I would give it 10 stars if I could.
The title of the book comes from a Norwegian superstition about the Nix, a cruel, vicious water spirit that appears in the form of a gentle horse. The moral of this fable is that the things you love the most will hurt you the worst.
Due to author Nathan Hill's incredibly creative structure, style and plot execution, this is unlike any novel I have ever read. The plot, which is complex and jumps back and forth primarily between 2011 and 1968, is far too difficult to summarize here. Read the official reviews for that, but know that you'll only get a sliver of it. The plot simply defies succinct description! But don't worry. Complex though it is, it is easy to follow.
As much as this book is about plot, it is even more about the characters. The main character is Samuel, a young professor of English at a small liberal arts college outside Chicago. He is the hub from which the other characters are the spokes--his mother who abandoned him when he was a child, a beautiful violin prodigy and her twin brother, a student who obsessively cheats, '60s college radicals, a violent police officer named Charlie Brown and a video gamer who plays to such excess that this addiction has extraordinarily dire effects on his health and brain.
One of the most interesting aspects of the author's form/function is that we as readers know things--a lot of things--that the characters don't know (or take a LONG time to learn/figure out). So we have background and insight into what is happening in a boldly innovative way that is curiously effective.
Most of all, Nathan Hill has accomplished every author's ideal hat trick: Great literature, highly-enjoyable entertainment and commercial success.
Epilogue (added after I published this review on Amazon and Goodreads): I was privileged to hear Nathan Hill speak at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. on September 2, 2017, and even he can't summarize the plot!