Review: "Sticker" by Henry Hoke

Sticker by Henry Hoke
Published January 2022 via Bloomsbury Academic
★★★

This is the fourth or fifth book I've read from Bloomsbury Academic's Object Lessons series. As a series, I love it—each book takes a brief look at an often unexpected object. To date Pregnancy Test is my favourite of the series, but I'm happy to keep reading to find out if another book might topple it.

As it turns out, though, Sticker isn't really about stickers. In Hoke's words, it's a memoir in 20 stickers, randomly arranged and full of contradictions (41). And I should love this anyway, because memoir is one of my favourite genres (if I had to pick one genre and stick with it for the rest of my life, memoir would be a finalist, and I'm still not sure what would win), but...in this case I was in it for the stickers, and they're only barely here. Instead this is about politics and Virginia and (not) coming out and feeling like a puzzle piece that doesn't quite fit.

This is still in line with the details of what's included in Object Lessons (I looked the series up again), but I think for my next dive into the series I'll aim for something a bit more object-focused.