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Seemingly out of nowhere, Naples author Nathan Hill’s debut novel The Nix has burst onto the literary scene. But those in Southwest Florida have known about the talented young author for quite some time. He once taught at Florida Gulf Coast University before retreating to cooler climates in Minnesota. He’s returned to the Gulfshore along with his wife, who plays bassoon with the Naples Philharmonic.
He’ll be signing books at the Barnes & Noble near Waterside Shops on Sept. 19. It’s bound to be a big draw, even if he weren’t a local, due to some of the praise he’s been getting in national press about the 600-plus-page opus about the relationship between mother and son. Here’s a sampling:
“After 10 pages of Nathan Hill's debut novel, The Nix, I flipped to the dust jacket. I wanted to see what the author looked like because I was thinking to myself, 'Jesus, this guy is gonna be famous. I wanna see what he looks like.'”—Jason Sheehan, NPR
“The pain of losing your mother during childhood is nearly impossible to get over. The wound never heals completely. I know this truth from experience. But I swear you don’t have to have suffered this elemental loss to appreciate Nathan Hill’s great sprawling feast of a first novel. The Nix will make anyone comprehend that endless, hopeless ache, and a whole lot more.”—Dan Cryer, Newsday
“The Nix is hugely entertaining and unfailingly smart, and the author seems incapable of writing a pedestrian sentence or spinning a boring story.”—Teddy Wayne, New York Times Book Review
“If there’s an excess of The Nix, it’s an excess of wily storytelling. Beneath the book’s highly improbable, overarching plot about an attack on a presidential candidate and a son’s search for his mother, you’ll find an inexhaustible collection of smart, witty scenes.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post