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 thats 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 talethe giant has a zdeath matrixy that measures how painful or slow Bens death at her hands will bebut keeps the focus on Bens efforts to get home to his family and confront his own demons. Magary smartly doesnt answer every question Bens journey raises, and the story is more satisfying as a result. The sense of disjointedness doesnt always feel intentional, and the journey is occasionally uneven, but its always fascinating and worthwhile