We Ride Upon Sticks

Ok, this will not be everyone's cup of tea but DAMN was it mine! I love Barry's style. This is a character-driven novel with the most surprising and utterly intriguing cast of characters I've seen in a while. And it's written as a collective narrative. WHAT?! Mind blown. I'm not sure I've ever seen this pulled off so effectively in a novel.

This book was instantly appealing to me. First of all, I played field hockey in high school. Second of all, I went through a Salem history phase when I was younger. Put together field hockey and some general witchery? I'm in. That being said, this book was nothing like I expected and all the better for it.

Utterly original and often hilarious imagery is what I think made this book so special. One of my favorite examples: “The full Beaver Moon sat in the sky like a woman who'd just had a face-lift, the patient concealed behind a bandage of gauzy clouds”. Get out of here. I love that sentence so much, and the book is chock-full of sentences like that. Normally when I'm reading excessive similes and metaphors I start groaning internally. Not this time.

I don't even want to talk about the plot because I am just so damn ecstatic about how much I enjoyed the language, the structure, and the mic-dropping truths Barry lays out along the way sans blatant agenda pushing. This book's time period missed me by about two decades, so I didn't have the nostalgia factor of being a teenager in the late 80's. I think if you did have that experience, you might enjoy it even more. But even though some references went over my head, it didn't detract from a thoroughly enjoyable reading experience. HIGHLY recommend if you want something weird, different, and funny that will make you want to high five the English language. Field Field Field!