The Nix is an epic novel that spans multiple decades. It follows Faye Anderson-Andersen and her son Samuel across the years in a narrative that flashes back and forth between the months leading to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, suburban life in the 1980s, and the beginning of the Occupy movement in 2011. I enjoyed reading it. It has something for everybody: leftists playing out rape fantasies with cops, children pulling sinister pranks, unrequited love, suburban ennui, blod boiling depictions of police violence, multigenerational curses, and various betrayals. I was, however, preoccupied throughout (especially towards the end) by the thought that this book did not really need to be over six hundred pages long. There are characters and whole sections that felt pretty obviously like they existed only to stitch together other segments of the “main” story. They didn’t exactly feel load-bearing, though. I wonder if the narrative would actually have disintegrated without them or if they are just indulgences left in for the sake of squeezing in a some extra observations and commentary. Overall, it’s worth your while to spend some time with this book, but at 625 pages, just barely…