recently I started reading a longish nonfiction book, so I thought I'd pick a fun, fast read. little did I know the book I picked almost as long as the other, however still a fun and mostly fast read. we ride upon sticks by Quan Berry is the novel I'm talking about. to sum up the plot, it takes place (mostly) in 1989 in Danvers, Massachusetts and chronicles the senior year fall season of the Danver's High field hockey team. this team sucks it up on the field real bad. the novel begins with the team at field hockey summer camp, where one teammate resorts to witchcraft to make her a better player. by the time the week is over every player on the team signs their name into their very own book of the devil, or Emilio. The fall goes on as the team wins game after game, takes risk after risk, and essentially come into their own, as a group and individually.
the story is told from the point of view of an omniscient narrator, often taking the voice of the team as a whole, high schoolers as a whole, or the voice of 2020 in a 1989 world. throughout the story we get beautiful character development for all of the field hockey team members, their internal lives, their home lives, their role and place on the team, culminating in a group yet individual coming of age. it's a diverse, fun group of women and one man (fondly known for most of the novel as Boy Cory). they are ballsy in a way only teenagers and people more devil may care than I. there are lessons learned, and lessons not learned. its gritty, poignant and ridiculous in turns.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book until the last fifty or so pages. the reason being it turns into an epilogue of sorts. the central thread of the story is the field hockey season, the games they win during the fall to get to state championships — the reason for the witchcraft, the reason it all began, and yet, the only mention of the state game is in passing, 30 years down the road. was there a climactic moment(s)? yes, indeed. did the climax absolutely need to be the state championship game? no, it did not. did I want to end the story with a glimpse into the future 30 years at which point the team was nearing fifty? no, not really.
I may have epilogue PTSD from the Harry Potter series, but here's my beef with the epilogue ending. I am invested in the characters at the time of the story. there is so much life that happens between the "now" of the story and the later that we never see. I personally like the capsule of the "now" of the story and don't really need the later. maybe an opinion wholly my own, but the flash forward epilogues take me way out of the story and I end up feeling let down.
overall I recommend.
read this book if you like: omniscient narrators, irreverence, constant glibness, women's empowerment— even if potentially flawed, sticking it to the man, witches and nontraditional coming-of-age stories.
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