Reviewed by B. B. Garin ||

Magic, folklore and high-intensity sports may not seem like a natural combination, but in Mason Boyles’s debut novel, Bark On (Jan. 2023, Driftwood Press, $25.99) the three collide with breathtaking force. Told from multiple perspectives, the story follows two young men, Ezra and Casper, and their unconventional trainer Benji, as they prepare for an Ironman marathon.

If I’d thought about Ironman participants at all before this, it was with an indifferent “they must be crazy” shrug, but here the race and preparation are a richly textured experience. Boyles takes us deep into a world where seconds are carefully shaved from finishing times along with eyebrows, and every ounce is accounted for down to sneaker weight. Along the way, he plunges us into the roiling minds of these athletes and their primal need for motion.

If Ezra and Casper are crazy for giving themselves over to such a test of endurance, it is a pure kind of crazy. For them, there is a transcendence in pushing the body beyond exhaustion. As they are driven deeper into the miasma of Benji’s training, enduring practices that boarder on torture, they begin to admit that winning the race isn’t the only goal. They are just as motivated by a fear of what will happen if they ever stop moving.

For Ezra there is safety in the obliteration that comes with training, “Without the burden of the next effort, he’d never get up; it would be crippling, the freedom to do whatever. Better to cocoon in exertion, exhaustion, routine.” While for Casper, a runaway teen, constant motion has become a way of life, the only protection he has against a world that doesn’t seem to have a place for him. But when this hectic thirst for exertion brings them to a tragic breaking point, they are forced to look beyond the insular moment of the race and consider the possibilities that exist in stillness.

However, this is anything but a straightforward journey. Not only are the distinctive voices of each character highly charged, demanding the reader keep pace with their unique twists and turns of language; but the narrative itself often borders on the surreal. Has Benji truly charmed his athletes, binding them to him with a strand of hair? Are the coyotes spreading across their island home like a plague a bit of climate change gone wild or are they called by magic? Should we believe in Shadefoots and Tulpas? Or is the darkness we carry always our own?

This is a world of feast or famine. Where things shift as rapidly as the eroding sands of the Outer Banks. It is both stark and beautiful, infused with the determined spirit of the Ironman and the breathless moment that comes after the finish line. Here longing tangles with joy, pain with release, and in the end, accepting all of it together may be what these characters need in order to find a true finish line.