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The Nix: A Novel
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The Nix: A Novel
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The Nix: A Novel
Audiobook21 hours

The Nix: A Novel

Written by Nathan Hill

Narrated by Ari Fliakos

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

From the suburban Midwest to New York City to the 1968 riots that rocked Chicago and beyond, The Nix explores-with sharp humor and a fierce tenderness-the resilience of love and home, even in times of radical change.

It's 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson-college professor, stalled writer-has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn't seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she's re-appeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high-school sweetheart. Which version of his mother is true? Two facts are certain: she's facing some serious charges, and she needs Samuel's help.

To save her, Samuel will have to embark on his own journey, uncovering long-buried secrets about the woman he thought he knew, secrets that stretch across generations and have their origin all the way back in Norway, home of the mysterious Nix. As he does so, Samuel will confront not only Faye's losses but also his own lost love, and will relearn everything he thought he knew about his mother, and himself.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 30, 2016
ISBN9780147523273
Unavailable
The Nix: A Novel
Author

Nathan Hill

Nathan Hill's short stories have appeared in many literary journals, including The Iowa Review, AGNI, The Gettysburg Review, and Fiction, where he was awarded the annual Fiction Prize. A native Iowan, he now lives with his wife in Naples, Florida. He is the author of The Nix and Wellness.

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Reviews for The Nix

Rating: 4.068661864436621 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Well written, interesting story, but too long, and there were characters and entire chapters that I really could have done without. I did not really care about any of the characters. The entire "gaming" side story did nothing for me, it was boring and unnecessary to the story. If you enjoyed anything by Franzen, and/or The Goldfinch, you might enjoy this rambling novel.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I quit reading this... a little over a quarter of the way in. Not impressed. So much promise turned into a chaotic read... it is like it was written by someone off their ADD meds. Nah. Do not recommend. I wonder if Amazon would give me my money back.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    This novel was absolutely dreadful. I almost always finish every book that I start to read. Many times, I read it through hoping that it will get better but knowing that it won’t, but I just couldn’t finish this one. This book was so bad in so many ways it’s hard to know where to start. The first thing is that I think the book was supposed to be humorous, but there was nothing that I found remotely funny about it. Not even a slight chuckle.Second, the novel was so utterly bloated. The editors should have cut about 75% of this novel. There was so little of it that actually added to the plot or developed character. There was obscene levels of flashbacks. In fact, there was more backstory than story. So much of the novel was just rambling that didn’t fit the narrative, develop character, or amuse me. It seemed to me that this was either an exercise for the author in seeing how many words he could put together in a book or something that was written just to amuse himself. The main character and the side characters were poorly characterized. There was nothing that I liked about it, and less than half way in, I threw in the towel. I would strongly advise to avoid this book.Carl Alves – author of Battle of the Soul
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Contrary to my first impression (based primarily on the title and a glance at the cover), this book has almost nothing to do with Nixon.

    I'll wait while you finish laughing at me.

    The Nix, it turns out, is the centerpiece of a dark Norwegian fable that threads itself through the book. The moral of the fable may be that pride goes before a fall, or it may be something with more dire psychological consequences. Either way, it stands like a lamppost in the background of the novel, casting the actions of characters into light and shadow.

    The most important of those characters are Samuel and his mother, Faye. Because the novel skips nimbly around in time, we see Samuel both as a college professor in his adulthood, and as a small child trying to earn his mother's affection. We see Faye as a young mother, as an older woman at the center of a strange but somehow believable political scandal, and as a teenager breaking out of her small-town roots and going off to the big city for college, right in the middle of hippies and war protests and the 1968 Chicago riots. Several minor characters flit around the edges of these vignettes, often as almost comically selfish villains. I also noticed that my sympathies as a reader seemed to be spread between Samuel and Faye in a sort of zero-sum game, as though understanding one necessarily involved despising the other a bit. That tells me that they were defined too much by the other, instead of existing independently.

    This novel never quite made up its mind whether it wanted to be satirical and darkly comic, or sentimental and painfully earnest. There's a lot to unpack here, and it's well worth the time spent, but it didn't quite come together as a cohesive whole. 4 stars for ambition and lots of interesting ideas, but with a better editor, I think this had the capacity to be a 5-star novel, and it was disappointing to see that promise fall short.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    There are parts of Nathan Hill’s hefty novel that are exceptional. These are mostly standalone chapters, such as the one in which our protagonist, Samuel Anderson, has a meeting with a college student who has failed, due to plagiarism, an essay on Hamlet. (Well, that one’s actually a bit too frighteningly real.) And there is another chapter with our protagonist immersed in an multi-player online fantasy game. Or the one about… You get the picture. Brilliant set-pieces. The question is whether they are more than that, since the novel as a whole is fairly standardly narrative. It cuts back and forth between events in 2011, 1988 and 1968. The plot is intricate and involved. Perhaps predictably all the bits and pieces tie up, sometimes in surprising ways, before the end. But that isn’t so surprising in a novel that was 10-years in the writing, apparently. Lots of plot. A few memorable set-pieces. And what else? Not so much.It’s a novel that you may feel could have lost a third of its content without losing any of its narrative push. Which makes it a bit of a slog to get through, perhaps. Still, I loved the brilliant set-pieces. So there is much to hope for in future novels from Nathan Hill.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book would have gotten five stars from me except for a couple of issues that I had with it. First, it's too long. Rambling soliloquies by some of the characters detracted from the book and made me wonder if I was just listening to a diatribe by the author himself. Second, it jumped around in time, which I usually don't mind, but was sometimes disjointed. I really thought that the author is a talented writer and, despite his obviously wry and ironic take on society (which got a little old), I would like to read more from him.

    I really wish Goodreads would allow 1/2 stars. I think 4.5 stars would have been appropriate.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Look. In today’s market, most readers want books with accessible, linear narratives that rely on big concepts and easy life lessons." This is the advice that the main character's agent has for Samuel as he tries to write a successful novel. Well folks you're not going to get that here. Nathan Hill's sprawling 600 plus page book takes on a myriad of topics including the riots at the 68 Democratic national Convention. This was a fascinating read and it brings up a lot of interesting points about current life in America. I will let the NYT summarize:The Nix,” Nathan Hill’s ambitiously panoramic and humane debut novel, oscillates between the poles of the 1968 Chicago protests and 2011. Its backdrop includes Occupy Wall Street, insipid pop singers and a reactionary, revolver-carrying Wyoming governor ready to run for president. Hill zeros in on the failures and discarded idealism of the boomers, a generation that pivoted, in less than two decades, from motorcycles to minivans, from socialism to sushi.But wait, as they say in the infomercials “The Nix” might lampoon — there’s more! The novel also tours 1940s Norway, suburban Chicago in the ’80s and the Iraq war, and it goes inside the heads of Hubert H. Humphrey; a cynical book publisher; a collegiate plagiarist; a hippie-bashing cop; and a video game addict, as well as a plethora of other characters, locales and eras. At the heart of this rich, funny narrative is a man's search for his mother who left him when he was eleven. He next sees her 30 years later as she is featured on the news throwing rocks at Governor Packer. She is dubbed the Packer Attacker. This journey of his creates a framework for Hill to wield his magic of social commentary. I enjoyed making this novel my big beach read of the summer.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    There is so much to praise about this big, exuberant, generous book. Accessible and entertaining from the very start, it allows itself time to examine its themes in glorious detail - the bits devoted to "Elfscape" could probably have filled a short novel by themselves and they were brilliant. The first glancing mention of Vietnam was like hearing the solemn clearing of a throat in the middle of a raucous party. As a non-American, the main significance of Vietnam for me is that I know it's of big significance to Americans. It was clear that there was going to be serious business in this novel amid the fun.Getting to the end I was astounded at the ground that had been covered, and the way the author had introduced us to his characters in such astonishing detail that they all felt real, without ever being boring or the standard of the writing ever dropping below brilliant. Definitely one of my reads of the year.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Interesting and great read! Listened to it on audible audio. Would definitely read/listen to this new author's next book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    For me, simply amazing. A very rich drama weaved together by smaller vignettes, which was beautifully done. It's not perfect, but it hits the spot for my tastes. I look forward to seeing more of Mr. Hill in the future!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    One of the best books I've read in a long time!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This perspicacious first novel by Nathan Hill knocked my socks off! The synchronic tune to current events spoke to me without pedantry, but with a heartfelt, folk like quality not unlike the Nix, the "Norwegian" folk tale referred to throughout this story. I loved the "present day" reportage of Chicago in '68- it had me turning to you tube for live documentation that confirmed the grasp the author had of the era and incident. Loved Allen Ginsberg's walk-ons, and references to his poetry were concise.A couple of times my focus wandered, during the long treatises on Elfworld, which admittedly did open a world into which I've never entered. Another stream of conscious rambling- a few pages of continuous sentencing- tried my dedication, but it was late at night (can't remember where this was, somewhere in the last third of the book).Samuel, Bishop & Bethany, of course Faye and Alice- wonderfully flawed characters, frustrating, earnest and so compelling. Their growth and development throughout the book was inspiring, and the theme of change not being easy, yet essential to growth resonated with me personally.Oh yeah, I laughed out loud, a lot. Can't wait for Nathan Hill's next book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book has a lot going on but it does all come together in the end. For me, it was about healing and forgiveness in a mad, mad world.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    *Well.* This is the best experience I've had reading literary fiction in yonks. Given my tendency lately to put books down without finishing them, I was a little wary of picking up a 700+ page piece of litfic, but I was also looking for some litfic that would kind of get me back into the groove of litfic. Not sure exactly what about The Nix made me think it was the book to do that, but it sure did. It took me about three weeks to finish this with fairly steady reading, and that feels decidedly like an accomplishment to me these days. It was long and it took a minute to read and I still stuck with it to the end. Booyah! Hill would be on my "Yay!" list if for only that, but, you guys, this book. It's awesome.The story revolves around Samuel Andresen-Anderson, a teacher of freshmen comp at a university, and his mother, Faye, who abandoned him when he was a child but has resurfaced in Samuel's life through some highly publicized legal trouble she's landed herself in. The narrative moves among the present (2011), Samuel's childhood (1988), and Faye's teenaged years (1968), and explores their family dynamics. Those narrative moves are extremely satisfying, but what most interested and impressed me about The Nix was the way it presents and examines American attitudes toward media, news, and politics. Over the course of the novel we see the protest/riot around the Democratic National Convention in '68 from the perspective of several characters protesting as well as from the police; from the perspective of Walter Cronkite covering it; from the perspective of "average Americans" watching the coverage. We see a very talented player of a MMORPG who is addicted to the game. We see a publisher trying to capitalize on a scandal before it leaves the collective American consciousness. We see family stories and how they do or don't stack up against reality. All these threads come together well, and as a whole they create this amazing look at narrative and story and news and reality and belief and how all those things play together to create individual and mass perceptions of the world that drive events but which are, to degrees we really can't even fathom from any one point of view, wildly untrue. You know that little frisson you get when you're reading a thriller or mystery or other puzzly book and you realize how it's all going to come together? I got that sensation in the last forty pages or so of [The Nix] at how he was bringing all his story and thematic threads together. This is decidedly the best book I've read so far this year. It's engaging, entertaining, well written, and says what it has to say masterfully. Read it, read it, read it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book was way to long. i didn't like any of the caracters and kept wondering what was the point of this story. I was about to give up on it I kind of wanted to know why his mother left him in the first place.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A good book with maybe one or two unnecessary story line. Not sure if I lived all the people in the book but interesting story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The following sentence in the synopsis of "The Nix" picqued my curiosity: "[...] Samuel will have to embark on his own journey, uncovering long-buried secrets about the woman he thought he knew, secrets that stretch across generations and have their origin all the way back in Norway, home of the mysterious Nix." While it was what role Norway played in a US bestselling novel that made me interested, the rest of the sentence made me somewhat sceptical, so I was pleasantly surprised to encounter some really funny scenes in the beginning, as well as engaging non-sentimental ohers. However, the last half of the book conforms more to what one might expect from the quoted sentence. Overall ok.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Intermittently well written. Worthwhile reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Some books truly capture the spirit of the current age and that is the case with The Nix, which includes references to child molestation, the Iraq War, Occupy Wall Street protesters, broken families, video game addiction, plagiarism, the entitlement of Millennials, gun politics, and presidential elections. The complexity of our age is displayed in the pages of this book, which includes plenty of failures and a few implausible plot devices, but also humor and a worthwhile reflection on our time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What a zany joyride.Fair warning: Nathan Hill has put a lot of stuff into this big novel. (He is not a writer lacking in confidence.) Things can get a bit manic, and it occasionally runs the risk of veering out of control. But it's also wise and intelligent, and suffused with humanity. And it is very, very funny.While reading, I was reminded of that classic exchange between Mozart and Emperor Joseph II in the film version of "Amadeus":"EMPEROR: My dear, young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Cut a few and it will be perfect.MOZART: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?EMPEROR: Well. There it is."There it is, indeed. To offer just one example: there's a 20-page section that is nothing but a series of inventive excuses offered by a plagiarizing college student to her professor. Excessive? Perhaps. Necessary to the story? No. But it's also utterly hilarious. So I'm not suggesting any specific notes to cut. I can't help feeling that this could have been a leaner and tighter book, and maybe that it could have more effective as a result. But this is the book Nathan Hill gave us, and I'll gladly take it as it is.Hill jumps back and forth in time and space, taking us on a wildly original romp through modern American history from the 1950s to the present. But at its core, this is a story of the relationships between three generations of an American family. And for all the craziness and hyperactivity, that thoughtful inner core is what makes his book special for me.He had me hooked with his opening montage: a young mother leaves her family, but slowly, over a period of months. She removes her personal items from the house one by one, and it's so gradual that her husband and son don't realize what's happening. In the process, she is also removing herself mentally, bit by bit. Then one day, she disappears for good. It's a terrific image, and Hill writes it in a way that is both heartbreaking and funny. And that really sums up what's best about THE NIX for me.This was mostly great fun, despite the occasional frustrations. In the end, it was the compassion and warmth of his novel that won me over.It may have been a long haul, but I'm glad to have been along for the ride.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Samuel is a college professor, single, who on his off time enjoys hiding away in his office at his computer playing Elfscape. He pines over his lost childhood love, and has never really recovered from the time his mother up and left his family when he was a young boy. When his mother suddenly makes an unexpected return to his life by headlining the national news, he is forced to confront his feelings for her and must decide if he wants to help her. This novel is a beast of a book at 600+ pages. It spans a large number of years, with the meat of the story taking place alternately in 1968 and 2011. There's a lot going on in this book, although it centers on present-day Samuel who is trying to figure out just exactly who his mother is and was, and his mother Faye as a high school teen and short-lived college student trying to find her place in the world. This book has been hyped up a lot. The writing reminded me of both Jonathan Franzen and maybe Donna Tartt, and it appears some other readers may have felt the same. What it ultimately came down to, for me, was that the story was decent enough, but excessively longer than it needed to be. Nathan Hill loves long sentences. There were sentences in this novel that went on and on and on. This bothered me somewhat, although was not quite as noticeable in audio format (I switched back & forth). I did enjoy this novel, but I tend to think perhaps it's not necessarily worthy of all the hype it's gotten.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Samuel Andreson-Anderson is a man with a lot of baggage. His mother abandoned him when he was 11 years old, which he should have seen coming since household objects slowly vanished from the house in the months preceding her disappearance. Years later, Samuel is a second rate English professor at a lesser known university with no real life friends, no dates, and an obsessive relationship to the internet game, Elfquest. Samuel had a brief moment of success and won a book contract after publishing a very successful short story. However, he squandered the money and never produced the book so his agent is planning to sue him. Oh, and he cries at the drop of a hat and has since childhood, an embarrassing personal flaw that embarrasses him at all the wrong times. When Samuel's long lost mother becomes a political headline, after throwing rocks at a conservative presidential candidate, Samuel is granted one last chance to redeem himself and avoid financial bankruptcy by writing a biography about his mother's failed life. Samuel's mother, however, is very secretive and unwilling to share why she left him and as such, Samuel goes on a mission to find the answers and save himself from impending financial disaster.The story bounces back and forth from the Vietnam protests in Chicago to modern day social media concerns, such as the degradation of the "real truth". I enjoyed the comparisons drawn between various levels of real and artificial social involvement, as well as the exaggerated scenes involving an entitled student who cheats in every class (and gets away with it) and an obsessive Elfquest player, who almost physically dies from his addiction due to malnutrition and lack of physical movement. There were parts of the story where I couldn't contain my laughter and thought it was the best book I've read. There were other times I became so bored of the story (particularly the Chicago university parts) that I wondered if I would even finish this 629 page novel. As others have mentioned, it reminded me of The Goldfinch, probably more because of the writing style and the fact that the primary character is a boy on his own without a mom. There is a lot going on in this book, which will make for excellent discussion in a book club. However, I would have preferred more editing from around the halfway point to the 75% mark. I think this story could have been briefer and still a powerful novel. In all, though, it was pretty entertaining and a book worth reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book! I'm conflicted about what to say about Nathan Hill's debut novel. On the one hand, it's one of my favorite kind of book - a big, meaty novel full of heart, and it's well-written and there are characters who are so nuanced and fully realized that it's a pleasure to read about them. Hill manages to humanize even the one truly bad man in this book - sure it's his wife's fault, but he's got layers. The Nix is a book about family, about how the ones you love are the ones who will hurt you, about the weight of the past, forgiveness and understanding. And it's a messy, bloated book, in which one character is made to be the one we are all supposed to hate and, unlike every other character, drawn without depth to be the butt of jokes. It's a novel where women are the source of men's discomfort, the cause of their failure and their reward for successfully changing their ways. And it's a novel with everything neatly and nicely tied up at the end, no ambiguity allowed. Samuel teaches English at a suburban university. He's not very good at it, preferring to put all his energy into not writing the book for which the advance has long been spent and playing an online World of Warcraft-style game. He's mad at his Mom for leaving him when he was eleven, which is also the year he made a good friend and developed a crush on his friend's talented sister. When his mother resurfaces - she's arrested for assaulting a presidential candidate - he agrees to write a nasty tell-all. The Nix moves forward and back as it follows his mother's past, Samuel's childhood and their present, in a world almost, but not quite like our own. It's the kind of book that's hard to put down, at least when Hill sticks with his main and secondary characters. He does go off on tangents that detract from the story he's telling, but the parts that center on Samuel, his mother or the people in their immediate orbit, the book is fantastic. I'm looking forward to what this author does next, and in seeing how he hones his craft.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Wow, what a book! For all of its intimidating heft (621 pages) and big classic themes (redemption, reinvention, finding oneself), The Nix was just a joy to plow through. This novel made it onto several 'best of 2016' lists and is certainly on mine. The plot is quite inventive, the characters sad, funny, and unforgettable, and the story moves across time and place in an effort to answer the many questions introduced throughout the chapters. It's a wild ride covering topics ranging from politics, college life, video games, Vietnam protests, rich folks, writing, book publishing, and about 10 others. It slows down just a bit, deep in the 2nd half, as the riots at the Democratic National Convention in '68 are addressed through the eyes of 2 of the main characters.The writing in The Nix is so good... there are probably 10 or more quotable sentences or passages spread across the pages. I wouldn't call it 'experimental', but a highly memorable sentence describing of the demise of one of the videogamers was an entire chapter in length. Often, when I encounter a long sentence in a book I revert to my childhood and think about how such a sentence would be diagrammed.... decided after about the first page that it wouldn't be a productive use of time. It's a hilarious (in a macabre way) passage, though, and Nathan Hill's unique approach to writing it just illustrates his excellence in matching technique to content. So, on the elements I generally 'rate' novels on, The Nix has a great plot and numerous contributing sub-plots, wonderful characters that are fully developed (hence the 621 pages), superb writing, a pace that may seem leisurely but moves quite quickly back and forth in time, and a nice ending. I tend to avoid 'big books with big themes' but am glad I made it through what's now my favorite book of the last year or so.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Samuel Andresen-Anderson is a failing writer and college professor whose mother abandoned him when he was a child, without explanation. She comes back into his life in a most unexpected way, by committing a ridiculous but highly publicized crime. Samuel plans to seize the moment and write a tell-all book to help pay off the advance for a book he has yet to write. It turns out, he knew very little about his mother, her parents, and the forces which have shaped him. Set in the present and the 1960s, Chicago and New York, The Nix explores the mother-son relationship and the secrets that shape families and friendships.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great novel in so many ways: themes, structure, characters, and heart. Also in number of pages. Choose your own adventure in contemplating these interconnected chapters ranging from the 1960's to 2011... motherhood, protest movements, political theater, academics, gaming addiction, identity, and more. Well done, Nathan Hill
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I had heard John Grisham raving about this debut novel by Hill in a radio interview so I picked it up sight unseen so to speak. This was a fantastic page turner that I highly recommend. An emotional thriller as you ride along with Samuel Andresen and his search for answers to his life and why his estranged mother "attacks" a polarizing presidential candidate. 2016 has been a down year for me reading wise, but this novel just made my top 5 and renergized my need to read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book came with a lot of hype for a first novel, but it was worth it. One of the best debuts that I have ever read. Not sure if Hill will ever be able to top this one. A sprawling tale that does a great job of satirizing our times. There is an eerie resemblance to our current political environment, playing video games, 1968, and so and so on. It is 620 pages so it drags just a little bit in certain spots, but it is so creative and the writing is excellent and entertaining. His take inside the mind of some of his characters is worth the price of the book. I highly recommend this book. I gave it 5 stars which I haven't done for awhile. There is an Irving, Franzen, Chabon feel to the book but it is really its own thing.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I saw Nathan Hill read from The Nix at the Iowa City Book Festival. He had the audience rolling with laughter with his description of Pwnage, a friend of Samuel Andresen-Anderson who spends most of his time playing World of Elfscape. But this is only a small part of the plot of The Nix, a novel that ranges from the Republican National Convention in Chicago in 1968 to Samuel's childhood in the 1980's to a present-day scandal in which a rock is thrown at a presidential candidate. Occasionally, the novel sprawls a bit too far, and the chapter that was written in a single sentence pushed my patience a bit, but the disparate threads come together to form a compelling story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Such an interesting mix of characters. Clever use of language as when Pwange goes on for an entire chapter in one sentence. Loved how the story all came together at the end.