Review: The Hike

The Hike by Drew Magary
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read a number of reviews of this one before I picked it up, so I certainly heard good things about it, but nothing gave me a sense of how playful most of this is. Most of what I read seemed to emphasize the existential questions that are the aftertaste here rather than the persistent clever game-like quality of it.

And, for me, it’s the playfulness that makes the first three-quarters enormous fun. Like Senlin Ascends and The Book of Lost Things – both of which I ultimately prefer to this still fine work – this is many ways a fairy tale for a 21st Century readership. Its best success comes in giving us an old woman dispensing magic beans, but doing so crankily and with exacting gardening demands. Or a talking crab who calls our protagonist Shithead. Or scary men with Rottweiler faces.

The details fly by, but the basic invitation is to lose ourselves in adventure and make believe. There are enough “now” moments – cell phones and business meetings – to make it feel as if it’s talking to our adult selves, but we’re invited to be frightened and thrilled like children. Our hero has to walk a literal path, venturing into an unknown that’s rigged only partway in his favor.

For much of this the point seems either pure entertainment – which it does well – or a meditation on the power of story itself to serve as an escape. I’m all in for the former; this is a clever story most of the way, and Magary has a terrific ear for juxtaposing the silly with the frightening. I’d be OK with the meta-narrative as well, but that’s been done.

As we near the end, though – and I think I can say it without a spoiler – Magary seems to feel he has to flex some philosophical muscle. The lightheartedness dims, and we start to see real suffering. Our hero faces an ultimate test linked to the nature of existence, and then he cheats (by “splitting”).

The result is a peculiar lingering melancholy that’s at odds with what makes most of this such a pleasure. Magary may have had this ending in mind the whole time, but it feels like a forced fit, like an effort at changing the tone late in the game.

So, while I like most of this, I think it’s ill-served by the last 30 pages. It becomes the novel people described before I read it, an intriguing one, but one less playful and less fun than most of what is really here.


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