You guys, Magary has been hiding the good drugs. This book was TRIPPY. In more ways than one it reminded me of “El viaje misterioso de nuestro Jomer,” The Simpsons episode where Homer hallucinates a coyote instructing him to journey to find his soulmate, but there’s a bit of Twilight Zone twistiness and, yeah, Chuck Palahniuk darkness.
I’m impressed a book this weird was conceived, written to book length, edited, and published. The weirdness was highlighted for me having gone into it blind on the strength of Magary’s name – I don’t care about sports but I read deadspin regularly because of his humor and unique perspective – but no amount of “Tom Brady is a Fancy Dog” hot takes could prepare me for Rottweiler faced murderers chasing the protagonist Ben into the woods for a crab-assisted surreal exploration of his soul.
It was good, I think. I have very little patience for weirdness for weirdness sake, but most of the seeming surreal tangents had some payoff, connecting to Ben in some fashion. And Magary’s trademark humor comes through in bits, particularly in our surly crab sidekick, which is good, because a lot here is dark. I like making suffering characters go through hell for its own sake about as much as I like random weirdness so the levity was needed. It’s well crafted, and well written. But I’m not certain I would’ve picked this up if I had known what kind of book it was beforehand.