The Hike by Drew Magary: The Odyssey for Suburban Dads (If Odysseus Did Psychedelics)

I picked up The Hike on a whim, mostly because I needed something interesting to read and the premise sounded weird enough to be worth a shot. Best impulse decision I've made in years.

Here's the thing: I almost didn't finish it. That opening scene when Ben first stumbles onto the hike and encounters those men in the Rottweiler masks was so viscerally unsettling that I genuinely considered putting the book down. It's aggressive right out of the gate, offering no comfort, no familiar ground to stand on. Just immediate, disorienting horror.

I'm so glad I kept going.

This Book Is Aggressively Weird (And That's The Point)

Let me be clear from the start: The Hike is aggressively weird. Not quirky-weird or whimsical-weird. Aggressively weird. The kind of weird that makes you stop reading and think, "Wait, what is happening right now?" multiple times per chapter.

The book doesn't ease up after that brutal opening. If anything, it gets more absurd, more surreal, more relentlessly strange as Ben continues down the path. Drew Magary writes with frenetic pacing. There's barely time to catch your breath between encounters before the next impossible thing appears. Talking crabs. Cannibal giantesses. Time shifts. Arena battles against creatures that shouldn't exist. It just keeps escalating.

As someone who's never done psychedelics, I can only guess, but this feels like what I imagine that experience might be: unsettling, disorienting, occasionally terrifying, and yet somehow compelling. There were multiple moments where I thought, "This is too much. This is too weird." I almost put it down a couple of times because it just kept pushing past the boundaries of what felt comfortable or manageable.

But here's what surprised me: the weirdness was charming. I know that sounds contradictory (how can something be both unsettling and charming?) but Magary pulls it off. The absurdity isn't random or cruel; it has a purpose, a strange internal logic that you can almost feel even when you can't articulate it.

The Odyssey, But Make It Suburban

If you stripped away all the surreal elements for a moment, The Hike is fundamentally a very old story: a man trying to get home to his family. That's it. That's the entire engine driving this bizarre journey.

Ben isn't a hero. He's not special. He's just a suburban dad who went for a hike before a dinner meeting and got trapped in a nightmare world where the only rule is "stay on the path, or you will die." Every impossible challenge, every surreal encounter, every moment of terror or confusion is all in service of that simple, primal goal: get back to his wife and kids.

This is what makes the book work. Underneath all the aggressive weirdness is something deeply human and relatable. We've all felt lost. We've all had moments where life stopped making sense and we had to keep moving forward anyway, not because we understood what was happening, but because the people we love were waiting for us on the other side.

Magary has written The Odyssey for suburban dads, and somehow that description is both ridiculous and completely accurate.

A Book That Lives in Your Head

I've read The Hike twice now over the last couple of years, and I just finished it again specifically to write this review. That should tell you something. This isn't a book you read once and forget. It burrows into your brain and sets up camp.

I think about this book constantly. Scenes pop into my head at random moments. Crab's profane wisdom, the sheer horror of certain encounters, the way time shifts and reality bends. But more than specific moments, I think about what the book means, about what Ben's journey represents. It's the kind of story that rewards re-reading because you catch things you missed the first time, patterns that only become clear once you know where it's all heading.

And oh my gosh, does it pay off.

This Book Is Not for Everyone (And That's Okay)

I need to be upfront here: The Hike is not a book for everyone. When I recommend it (and I have, multiple times) it's always to a very specific type of person. Usually dads. Usually guys who've read enough books to appreciate when something breaks the mold. People who can tolerate sustained, aggressive weirdness in service of something deeper.

If you need your books to make sense in conventional ways, this isn't it. If absurdism frustrates you, or if you prefer stories that explain their rules clearly and stick to them, you're going to have a rough time. The book asks you to trust it through long stretches of "what the hell is happening," and not everyone will want to take that leap.

That opening scene with the Rottweiler masks? That's Magary telling you exactly what kind of book this is going to be. If that scene makes you want to put the book down (and it almost did for me), this might not be your book.

But if you can push through that discomfort, if you're willing to embrace the chaos and let the story be aggressively weird and occasionally off-putting, then you're in for something special.

That Ending Though

I don't want to spoil anything, but I have to say: the ending is incredible. After everything Ben endures, after all the surreal trials and impossible challenges, Magary sticks the landing in a way that recontextualizes the entire journey. It's the kind of ending that makes you want to immediately flip back to page one and read it all again with new eyes (which I did, twice).

The payoff isn't just about whether Ben gets home. It's about what the journey meant, what he had to become to complete it, and what we're willing to endure for the people we love. It's emotionally honest in a way that catches you off guard because you've been laughing at a profane crab or reeling from the latest impossible creature.

This is why I keep thinking about the book. This is why I've read it multiple times. The ending doesn't just conclude the story. It illuminates everything that came before it.

Final Thoughts

The Hike is a book that demands something from you. It asks you to sit with discomfort, to push through moments that feel too weird or too unsettling, to trust that the aggressive strangeness serves a purpose. It's not an easy read, and there's no shame in deciding it's not for you.

But if you stick with it, if you let yourself be pulled along by Drew Magary's frenetic pacing and relentlessly bizarre imagination, you'll find something that stays with you long after you've finished. A book you'll think about constantly. A book you'll want to re-read. A book with an ending so good it justifies every uncomfortable, surreal moment that came before.

I needed an interesting book. I got one I can't stop thinking about. I got The Odyssey for suburban dads, filtered through a psychedelic nightmare that somehow becomes one of the most emotionally honest stories about love and persistence I've ever read.

That's the best kind of impulse decision.

Rating: Highly recommended (but only for the right reader)
Genre: Fiction, Fantasy, Surrealist Literature
Book: The Hike
Author: Drew Magary