This may end up being one of those books that end up on my "in my life" bookshelf. Like reading John Irving or Ian McEwan for the first time and knowing it would impact me in some way. I was besotted early on with this jam-packed, visceral, ardently informative and devastatingly rich novel. 
 Samuel Andreson-Anderson is a rundown, unmotivated part-time literature professor at a small college when he finally decides to take a stand with a student who hands in a plagiarized paper. About the same time as this leads to events that blow up in his face, he finds out his long estranged mother has been arrested for attacking a major political figure. Meanwhile, to avoid the realities of his situation, he becomes semi-obsessed with an online game "Elfscape". During a particularly difficult battle sequence, he begins to ponder how it all went so wrong. 
 This sets off a series of memories, which sets off a series of investigations, which sets off a series of character studies, in which we get to intimately visit the lives of those people that have recently effected the life of Samuel. Sounds a bit confusing and maybe even messy? Not at all. And that's just part of this novel's appeal. 
 We get to travel back in time with Samuel to his childhood and the year that he meets his best friend, the girl who will be the love of his life and a long tense summer spent with his Mom. 
 We get to meet Faye, Samuel's mother, as a teen and later a college student in Chicago in 1968, along with learning about her next door neighbor in the dorms, Alice, and a corrupt cop named Charlie Brown. 
 We get to meet Pwnage, Elfscape's most decorated player and aspiring novelist, trying to start a diet and win back his wife. 
 We get to meet Laura Pottsdam, an ambitious student but completely unmotivated in all of the places it counts most. 
 We get to meet Guy Periwinkle, Samuel's literary agent and tastemaker to the media masses. 
 All of these people have their own stories to tell in The Nix and all of them will help to connect the dots to create the astonishing last act of the novel. 
 The Nix made me sit and ponder life. It shared hard truths that we all share, while still being able to find the humor in them. There was genuine heartbreak, but also joy and ultimately an optimism that while we have to repay our debts, that journey in itself can be a reward.