We Ride Upon Sticks: A Novel (Alex Award Winner) Audiobook

Quotes

• “A delightful, hilarious ode to the ‘80s.”

  — Ms. magazine

• 2021 ALEX AWARD WINNER

• In the great chasm that is 2020, this book was a huge bright spot for me . . . This was the shake-up and downright weird and nerdy book that put my reading back on track while quarantined.

  — Cassie Gutman, Book Riot (“Best Books of 2020”)

• Psst. Hey you. Yeah, you. If you’re looking for a good time, call . . . your local bookstore and ask them to set aside a copy of Quan Barry’s We Ride Upon Sticks with your name on it. This novel, in which a high school field hockey team turns to the dark side (well, sort of) via a pledge penned in purple in an Emilio Estevez notebook (it’s the 80s), is almost too much fun to be allowed. I haven’t snickered so much reading a novel since I was a kid, but it’s not just slapstick, or the pure goofiness of the time period—the pleasure comes from Barry’s ludicrous, masterful sentences as much as it does from her ludicrous, over-the-top characters. Truly a delight in every way.

  — Emily Temple, Lit Hub Senior Editor

• An absolute gift—a genuinely funny page turner with enough heart to win any championship.

  — Jolie Myers, NPR“[A] delightful, pop culture-packed novel . . . In revealing the team members’ individual histories, the book becomes more than just a story of field hockey and witchcraft—it’s an energetic and original examination of young people wrestling with all the complicated parts of growing up.

• This is a novel by a poet and it rules . . . The prose style is neon and the laughs do not stop. I feel like the author wrote the entire book with an evil grin on her face.

  — Molly Young, Vulture

• Packed with the ’80s flare of Stranger Things.

  — Sabienna Bowman, PopSugar

• The book takes on the task of crafting compelling characters out of eleven protagonists, and succeeds in spades. [A] delightful narrative mosaic . . . Barry is a skilled storyteller and sentence artist who embraces irreverence where irreverence is due . . . As the story wind-sprints toward its deeply gratifying ending, one can’t help but grab a stick and hold on.

  — Sarah Neilson, Minneapolis Star Tribune

• Spellbinding, wickedly fun . . . Each sentence fizzes like a just-opened bottle of New Coke.

  — O, The Oprah Magazine

• Riotously entertaining . . . A witty, unruly ode to female empowerment and camaraderie

  — Rob Thomas, The Capital Times

• A delightful, hilarious ode to the ’80s.

  — Karla Strand, Ms. Magazine

• A perfect blend of aesthetic and narrative pleasure . . . It’s very funny and a little angry and a lot of fun.

  — Maris Kreizman

• Touching, hilarious, and deeply satisfying . . . Readers will cheer [the team] on because what they're really doing is learning to be fully and authentically themselves.

  — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

• Charming . . . Pat Benatar pounds throughout this novel, ‘Hit me with your best shot’ being applicable to a surprising number of situations, athletic, romantic, and supernatural . . . But Barry is . . . careful not to let nostalgia paper over the real ways in which things were worse in the 1980s, particularly for queer people and people of color.

  — Annalisa Quinn, NPR.org

• Quan Barry writes of [her characters] lovingly, tracing their coming-of-age with sardonic wit and generous indulgence.

  — Claire Hopley, The Washington Times

• A playful, nostalgic run through 1980s suburbia . . . Barry handles a large cast of characters nimbly and affectionately, allowing each to take a turn or two in the spotlight. Readers with fond, or even not so fond, memories of the 1980s are bound to be entertained.

  — Publishers Weekly

• NPR’s “Best Books of 2020

• TIME “Must Read Books of 2020”