I Cheerfully Refuse (Hardcover)
Staff Reviews
I met Leif Enger at Milwaukee’s Oriental Theatre on his tour for Virgil Wander, which is still one of my top five favorite books ever. I felt like I already knew him. The writing matched the man. He has a rare combination of warmth and intelligence, a reverential and brilliant awareness of humanity, and here he brings these qualities back to a familiar Lake Superior setting. This time it’s a story told by a man named Rainier, after the mountain. It got shortened to Rainy, fitting his life on the shore of a stormy lake in a very edgy near future where survival is always uncertain. Rainy’s tongue-in-cheek (crossing into smart-ass) observations and the joy and perseverance of fellow travelers are enough to make me believe that “pathways to beauty and color” can survive our impending chaos. The novel turns to wicked suspense, as Enger shows us with creative clarity a struggling world that seems entirely possible. Rainy must navigate Lake Superior to escape a supremely clever and powerful man in the aftermath of a horrifying crime. I wasn’t sure I could finish the book. It’s relentless at times, with the only comfort being the rhythm of Rainy’s Fender Jazz bass guitar, but we all try to get home somehow. I trusted Leif Enger to lead me and the book home. He didn’t let me down. Even if he had, his characters understand that “sometimes no right ending can be found.” Maybe what matters is only that people like Enger keep searching for majestic human stories.
— Tim McCarthyDescription
A career defining tour-de-force from New York Times
bestselling, award-winning and "formidably gifted" (Chicago Tribune) author
of Peace Like a River Leif Enger.
A storyteller "of great humanity and huge heart" (Minneapolis
Star Tribune), Leif Enger debuted in the literary world with Peace Like
a River which sold over a million copies and captured readers' hearts
around the globe. Now comes a new milestone in this boldly imaginative author's
accomplished, resonant body of work. Set in a not-too-distant America, I
Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of a bereaved and pursued musician embarking
under sail on a sentient Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply
beloved, bookselling wife. Rainy, an endearing bear of an Orphean narrator,
seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs and remote islands of the inland sea. Encountering
lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, Rainy finds on land
an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling
class, crumbled infrastructure and a lawless society. Amidst the Gulliver-like
challenges of life at sea and no safe landings, Rainy is lifted by physical
beauty, surprising humor, generous strangers, and an unexpected companion in a
young girl who comes aboard. And as his innate guileless nature begins to make
an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy's private quest for the love of his life
grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in
his strengthening wake.
I Cheerfully Refuse epitomizes the "musical, sometimes magical and deeply
satisfying kind of storytelling" (Los Angeles Times) for which Leif
Enger is cherished. A rollicking
narrative in the most evocative of settings, this latest novel is a symphony
against despair and a rallying cry for the future.
About the Author
Leif Enger grew up in Osakis, Minnesota, and worked as a reporter for Minnesota Public Radio before writing his bestselling debut novel Peace Like a River, which won the Booksense Award for Fiction and was named one of the Year's Best Books by Time Magazine and the Los Angeles Times. His second novel, So Brave, Young, and Handsome, was also a national bestseller. It was a Midwest Booksellers Honor Book, and won the High Plains Book Award for Fiction. His third novel Virgil Wander was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was named a best book of the year by Amazon, Library Journal, Bookpage, and Chicago Public Library. He lives with his wife in Duluth, MN.
