The Hike

The Hike was the first book I finished this year, and it definitely took me on a wild ride. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was getting into, but this book turned out to be chaotic, adventurous, and very different from anything else I’ve read recently.
At its core, the story follows a man who goes on a hike while away from home—only for that hike to turn into a long, surreal journey back to his family. The book moves fast, sometimes too fast, and constantly throws new obstacles and strange scenarios at the main character. Listening to it on audiobook definitely added to that feeling, though the narration itself was solid.
What I enjoyed most were the characters he meets along the way. The supporting cast is far more memorable than I show more expected, and they added humor, depth, and heart to the story. There are moments that are genuinely funny and others that feel almost absurd, but that outlandishness is part of the book’s charm.
That said, this is not a book that explains everything neatly. I finished it with quite a few unanswered questions, especially around the purpose of the journey itself. While the story clearly wants to convey a message about life, time, and appreciating what you have, it sometimes felt like the main character already understood that lesson before the journey even began. Because of that, parts of the story felt more confusing than meaningful.
Still, I didn’t dislike this book. It’s fast-paced, imaginative, and commits fully to its weirdness. Even when I wasn’t sure what was happening—or why—it kept me engaged simply because of how bold and unpredictable it was.
Overall, The Hike is a strange, adventurous read that won’t be for everyone, but if you enjoy stories that take risks, embrace absurdity, and don’t always spell everything out, this one might be worth checking out. show less

I’m pretty sure I heard about this book from Kendra Adachi, who seems to be a potential book twin, also drawn to some wonderfully weird, oddball, unique, and off-kilter writing. (See also The Bloggess.)

The Hike is a JOURNEY and a vibe. It reads like a surreal fever dream that sorta daisy chains to Tom Robbins with a touch of Blake Crouch and Douglas Adams thrown in. I’ve never read the author’s other stuff, so can’t say if this is typical or a-.

This book is delightfully, all-caps WEIRD. I love stories that are unconventional in style or format and plot twists I can’t see coming. This was that in spades. It’s dark with bits of inappropriate or morbid humor or dialogue sprinkled in like catnip. Some of the characters were show more giving me everything - particularly the smokes, Fermona the cannibalistic giant, the cranky crab, and the dogfaces.

I’m sure there’s a metaphor or probably several that could be fished out of this, but I won’t ruin it. The dual plot twist/s at the end, well. Not only did I not see them coming, but I laughed out loud.

Not for everyone, but it’ll find its people and is raucously joyful from beginning to end. show less

I'd like to give this a 3.5 but half stars are not an option! Running on dream logic and deeply weird, this was a good read. It's well written, and a roller coaster of emotions right up to the very end.
It'll definitely be one of my staff recs!

I don't think I've ever felt more compelled to leave a review for a book. I read The Hike in three sittings over a couple of days because I was engaged, surprised, curious, frustrated, or a mix of those things at any given point.

The descent Ben experiences is gut-rending and near unbearable. The introduction of Crab was one of the best parts of the story because it brought humor to a dark beginning and then served to set up the climax of the entire story (which caught me completely off guard, which was nice). Seeing Ben struggle with the desire to get home and the desire to give up was exhausting for me as a reader and I think it helped me connect more to the plight.

It's a weird, weird story with lots of twists. Admittedly, the second show more third felt long and, for me, didn't contribute a whole lot to the arc of the story other than add a ton of time to Ben's trip, which was disappointing. But the time-loop reveal helped boost my interest and kept me reading closely.

Other people have mentioned the ending, and I have to agree, it's perfect. I had doubts about how Magary would wrap it up and it was done perfectly. I'm sure I'll be revisiting this book sometime in the future to read more closely and see what else I can pick up on a second time through. show less

This was fun. A surrealistic ride. This is the first I have read from Magary.

Ben, the hero of the story, arrives at a mountain resort on a business trip. It’s one of those I-really-don’t-want-to-do-this-but-I-have-to business performances, and he’s not looking forward to it.

Ben decides to take a little time to go on a little hike. He’s told by desk clerk that there are no trails to hike, even though they are in the midst of a mountain resort. Ben decides to find his own trail.

Soon he’s out on his own, on a trail that’s oddly deserted. Right away, it starts to turn into a nightmare, through a kind of invisible trap door that he won’t escape from without meeting tests, challenges, and temptations.

The trail takes him on a show more personal odyssey, in which he confronts mythological challenges tuned to his own psyche — men with Rottweiler faces, a temptation from his youth, a giant smart-mouthed woman who tests her men before cooking them into a cannibal’s stew, and all along the way teases from his real life and family just always out of reach. He even meets himself, as a kind of metamorphosed future self and ally.

It would be too easy to classify Magary’s book as just an adaptation of the idea of an odyssey of self-discovery and finding out what really matters to you, with a familiar moral — don’t let the annoyances, the fears, the obstacles define your life. But that would miss the imagination and humor that suffuse the story. It’s downright hallucinatory. It’s a good trip, though.

Magary’s writing is light and easy to read. He mixes humor and imagination with light-handed insight. Maybe that's the best way to deliver insight. This is a book it's hard to imagine not enjoying. show less

Let's talk for a minute about plot twists at the end of novels.

Humans have been telling stories of all different varieties for a fairly long time, so it's pretty hard to tell a story with twists and turns that are impossible to see coming. That being the case, plot twists should never be the foundation for a story. The characters are far more important. Scooby-Doo isn't a classic because the Miner Forty-Niner turned out to be the caretaker or whatever. It's all about the meddling kids! If the success or failure of a story is based entirely on a bombshell ending, then the ending becomes at best a bailout for a weak narrative and at worst a reminder of how much all the characters involved in the big twist sucked.

What purpose, then, can a show more surprise ending serve for quality literature? The Hike presents us with a great answer.

In The Hike, a married father of three in his mid-thirties named Ben takes a walk in the woods that goes awry. He enters, as the back cover of the book puts it, "a world of man-eating giants, demons, and colossal insects." That's not a place I want to be, and it's not a place Ben wants to be, but he's stuck there for a while, facing a series of demanding challenges on an increasingly bizarre journey. Eventually, Ben discovers he's not the only one who's been forced down such a path, and as much as I hate to admit to having emotions of any kind, the ending floored me.

As tempted as I am to spoil it, I'll instead do my best to summarize the ending's significance. Upon finishing the book I immediately thought of something Dostoevsky wrote in The Idiot.

“There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas.”

Drew Magary takes this idea and demonstrates what to do with it. We must learn to understand how incapable we are of fully grasping the inner lives of the people about whom we care the most, and we then must find the best way to love them within that understanding.

So what makes The Hike's ending great? The denouement of Ben's journey actually enhances the significance of each step he took along the way. His discovery of who else has taken a walk like his gives both him and the reader a better understanding of why his trip mattered. Yeah, it's kind of cool that I didn't see it coming, but a good, fulfilling ending to a novel is more surprising than a plot twist could ever be. show less

There comes a clichèd point in most stories that deal with insanity where the nutjob asks the sane one who determines what sanity is, and maybe we've got the whole thing inside-out. I can say without hesitation that The Hike is batshit insane, but there's nonetheless a steadfast internal logic and heart that undergirds the craziness and connects all of the terrifying parts into a cohesive (if hallucinatory) whole.

It's rare to find a "grounded" fantasy that doesn't traffic overtly in "magic" with laws and rules (think Harrys Potter and Dresden), especially when combined with a rollicking adventure plot. Think of The Hike as a modern-day Odysseus, only with lot more LSD involved (in execution if not authorship). Eminently relatable main show more character, highly entertaining and endearing sidekicks, thoroughly enjoyable to read (unlike trying to slash your way through the thickets of this review), this is a fun book. show less