The Hike

In this peculiar literary odyssey, Magary reexamines some of the same themes he covered in The Postmortal while throwing in some fascinating dream imagery, assorted video game tropes, and a story structure that’s deliberately predictable (with nods to many other tales of wandering through strange lands before returning home) but still surprising. A man named Ben wanders from a hotel for a hike, gets attacked by a bizarre man wearing the skinned head of a rottweiler, and soon gets lost in the woods. As he wanders, he slips into dreams where he relives missed opportunities from his life. In his waking hours he meets various fantastical creatures, including a talking crab and a gorgeous, polite, human-eating giant. Magary throws plenty of humor into the tale—the giant has a “death matrix” that measures how painful or slow Ben’s death at her hands will be—but keeps the focus on Ben’s efforts to get home to his family and confront his own demons. Magary smartly doesn’t answer every question Ben’s journey raises, and the story is more satisfying as a result. The sense of disjointedness doesn’t always feel intentional, and the journey is occasionally uneven, but it’s always fascinating and worthwhile. (Aug.)