I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Twenty little meditative essays inspired by a ubiquitous part of 1980s and 1990s childhoods: Stickers. (GAWD how I hated the damned things. "Easy release" my lily-white one! I was still finding them on the undersides of chairs and backs of paintings in 2010.)

Author Hoke shines in these quick hits of memory, bringing the reader back into his world as it was and thinking about his various challenges...disabled mother in a wheelchair, absent father, being queer in Charlottesville, Virginia...and the roots his white self has in the South, with all the freight that implies.

He reckons with comparatively large parts of his ancestral racism; he states that, with all its contradictions, he intends this read to make his identity "...a little more tangible." Without being acquainted with the gentleman, I feel that I have a picture of him as a person that would never be obtainable through any more rigorous, structured look at what makes a person into the unique self they are. No, it's not autobiography, or even memoir, it's that rare thing : The reflective essay, the thoughtful, loosely organized look into the back corners of the closets and the darker recesses of the attic for the bright, shiny things once delighted in and now gathering patina and dust in unused parts of one's mind

I enjoyed myself as I wandered around with Author Hoke as he showed me his once-prized gewgaws and knick-knacks. Join us for a good old wander. ( )

Sticker by Henry Hoke, a volume in the Object Lessons series, is an interesting and compelling look at the life of stickers (many different kinds) as they parallel the life of the author.

As you probably know if you've read any books in this series (unless you're Theeasinine) the object serves as a springboard into something larger, in this case a person's life and a city's history. If you want to know what an object is, google it. If you want to know how an object lives alongside and within the world, this series offers many interesting excursions. Apparently for some anything that they can't understand is somehow Marxist, which is really just a reflection of their lack of intellect, Theepathetic.

While reading this you will likely remember your own experiences as they relate to stickers. Maybe the same stickers (gold stars in school, bumper stickers), maybe entirely different stickers. Hoke uses the stickers from his life to tell his story as well as, to a large extent, Charlottesville's story. I lived there for a few years and loved the town but, like any city, some of its past and even present can be troublesome.

I would recommend this to those who enjoy memoirs, especially those with unusual framing devices. Aside from the memoir aspect it will also appeal to those who like to read things that might make them reflect on their own lives, and stickers may well spark some reflections and memories.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )