I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger
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I Cheerfully Refuse

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Leif Enger

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4.4

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1,079 ratings


BARNES & NOBLE BOOK CLUB PICK • 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 rare, remarkable book to be kept and reread—for its beauty of language, its gentle wisdom and its steady, unflagging hope.” — Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star Tribune

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.

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ISBN-10

0802162932

ISBN-13

978-0802162939

Print length

336 pages

Language

English

Publisher

Grove Press

Publication date

April 01, 2024

Dimensions

6.5 x 1 x 9.25 inches

Item weight

1.1 pounds


Popular Highlights in this book

  • What scares me is the notion we are all one rotten moment, one crushed hope or hollow stomach from stuffing someone blameless in a cage.

    Highlighted by 340 Kindle readers

  • It’s taken all my life to learn protection is the promise you can’t make. It sounds absolute, and you mean it and believe it, but that vow is provisional and makeshift and no god ever lived who could keep it half the time.

    Highlighted by 271 Kindle readers

  • You’re a man who stops and listens. If that’s not the definition of friendship, it’s close enough for now.

    Highlighted by 265 Kindle readers

  • Lark’s theory of angels was that they are us and we mostly don’t remember.

    Highlighted by 205 Kindle readers

  • Did I understand it? Not by half, but when it thunders you know your chest is shaking.

    Highlighted by 163 Kindle readers


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Editorial Reviews

Praise for I Cheerfully Refuse

  • Barnes & Noble's April Book Club Pick
  • #11 on Amazon Editors’ Best Books of the Year So Far List
  • An April Indie Next Pick
  • An Amazon Top 10 Editors Pick for the Month of April
  • A Most Anticipated Book of 2024 from Literary Hub

“The sweetest apocalyptic novel yet . . . Nobody describes profound joy or “blazing love” with such infectious abandon as Enger, and it’s a pleasure to be back under his influence . . . But be forewarned: Maniacal forces looming in the shadows of this novel will not stay in abeyance for long . . . In his previous novels, Enger may have whistled past the cemetery, but this time he’s digging deeper and even dancing with the bones . . . Enger casts this adventure as an Orphean quest, but once Rainy takes on a young sidekick who’s also on the lam, the enterprise feels like 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' reconceived by Cormac McCarthy.” — Ron Charles, Washington Post

“Stunning, almost pitch-perfect, with a harrowing tale and beguiling characters . . . with all its tragedy and darkness, this novel is not depressing; it feels buoyant . . . A rare, remarkable book to be kept and reread—for its beauty of language, its gentle wisdom and its steady, unflagging hope.” — Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star Tribune

“As readable as anything [Enger] has written, [I Cheerfully Refuse] refreshingly concerns itself less with the miraculous than with what is right before our eyes, even when we want to look away . . . In Mr. Enger's hands Lake Superior becomes a character of its own: beautiful, tempestuous, a vast chasm between two nations . . . An accomplishment that is beacon enough." — Michael O'Donnell, Wall Street Journal

“An unusual and meaningful surprise awaits readers of Enger’s latest, which takes place largely on Lake Superior, as a man named Rainy tries to reunite with his beloved wife, Lark . . . [Enger’s] retelling of Orpheus (who went to the underworld to rescue his wife) contains the authentic hope of a born optimist.” — Los Angeles Times

“In a rickety sailboat on storm-tossed Lake Superior, a grieving musician flees a powerful enemy . . . Leif Enger’s latest novel steers a harrowing course through a broken world. Yes, it’s grim, but in Enger’s capable hands it’s also a riveting story of resilience and kinship.” — Christian Science Monitor, “10 Best New Books of April”

“This story is really something. It’s startling. It’s a little close to home. Somehow it’s at the same time gentle. Rainy’s flight feels like a warm and sweet and loving sort of nightmare . . . We are in the hands of a good-hearted storyteller, the sort of writer who can create a dark, frightening story while nevertheless reminding us of goodness, decency and reasons to go on.” — Mankato Free Press

“Enger's modern epic follows Rainy, a musician in an environmentally and politically dystopian future . . . The story clearly borrows from the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, in which an enchanting lyre player follows his wife into Hades, but [Rainy's] larger-than-life misadventures also evoke Odysseus, Don Quixote, and Gulliver. It’s a book that loves books . . . and the many literary references underscore a timely theme: the vital, transformative power of books, especially as weapons against willful ignorance.” — Bustle

“[I Cheerfully Refuse] evolves into a retelling of the Orpheus myth, leavened with a healthy dose of the Odyssey, and told in the tradition of the American ballad with the aesthetic sensibilities of Amor Towles . . . Indeed, Enger, like Towles, is one of those writers who make the process seem easy (though you know it’s not), as if the Leif Enger project itself is to make the lyrical seem everyday . . . Leif Enger’s books are about grief, but they are also about the life that beauty can provide if you’re brave enough to sit with it.” — World

“[I Cheerfully Refuse] is chockful of wistful melancholy, sad wisdom, shadowed sunshine, lambent darkness, and salvaged treasures . . . The true triumph that drives the book is Rainy’s first-person voice . . . Carried along by this empathetic and lovable voice, the reader will endure privation and threats with equanimity, and receive the moments of jubilation and reward with joy . . . Rainy's hegira offers love and hate, frustration and catharsis in equal measure.” — Paul Di Filippo, Locus Magazine

“An affecting story of love, loss and loyalty that’s also a colorful and deeply imagined tale of maritime adventure and survival . . . Some night, when the wind rattles the shutters and raindrops pelt the windows, curl up with this good-hearted novel and imagine yourself sharing a rickety sailboat with Rainy and Sol. You’ll be guaranteed a rewarding journey.” — Bookreporter

“The transcendent latest from Enger (Peace Like a River) is at once a dystopian love story, a nautical adventure, and a meditation on loss, kindness, and natural beauty . . . This captivating narrative brims with hope.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Magnificent . . . Comet-bright and eloquent, I Cheerfully Refuse is a perfect novel that treats dystopian circumstances as transient so long as literacy remains.” — Foreword Reviews, starred review

“The novel’s ruined world, marked by book burnings, anti-intellectual sentiment, environmental disruption and casual brutality, will feel entirely too plausible for readers. Yet within its dystopian landscape, Enger’s story incorporates a strain of fabulism . . . Like turbulent Lake Superior, I Cheerfully Refuse is filled with polarities that should contradict but somehow, instead, cohere: hopeless moments infused with light and shocking acts of cruelty depicted through beautiful, memorable prose. Although the struggle to survive leaves room for little else, Rainy still finds delight in simple, ordinary things: the post-storm sun or a ripe tomato. It’s in these moments of earnest wonder that I Cheerfully Refuse is most compelling, like the brief but glorious clearing of a tempestuous sky.” — BookPage, starred review

“There’s both a playfulness and a seriousness of purpose to the latest from the Minnesota novelist, a spirit of whimsy that keeps hope flickering even in times of darkest despair.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Enger's prose is beautiful to behold." — Booklist

“[Enger] has a knack for tackling difficult, troubled subjects and yet claiming a hopeful optimism as our right. Enger does it again with this picaresque tale set in a near-future America.” — Parade

“Part sea adventure, part thriller, with a little magic along the way. It’s a love letter to bookstores, to reading, and to hope in a dark world, told in the lush prose we expect from the author of Peace Like a River." — St. Paul Pioneer Press

“I Cheerfully Refuse—an odyssey whose Odysseus is also part Aeneas, Huck Finn, and perhaps most of all Orpheus—is one of a kind . . . The tale will absorb you utterly, and there is much to mourn here. But it is oh-so-breathtakingly beautiful.” —Current

“This harrowing, but beautifully told, tale is a sly paean to books, language, love and the transformative power of receiving and extending kindness. I cheerfully endorse it.” — Erin Kodicek, Senior Editor at Amazon specializing in Literary Fiction

“A book that reads like music, both battle hymn and love song for our world. A true epic—heartbreaking, terrifyingly prophetic, but above all, radically hopeful.” — Violet Kupersmith, author of Build Your House Around My Body

“A heart-racing ballad of escape, shot-through with villainy and dignity, humor and music. Like Mark Twain, Enger gives us a full accounting of the human soul, scene by scene, wave by wave.” — Josh Ritter, singer and author of The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All

Praise for Virgil Wander

“Enger deserves to be mentioned alongside the likes of Richard Russo and Thomas McGuane. Virgil Wander is a lush crowd-pleaser about meaning and second chances and magic.”— New York Times Book Review

“[Virgil Wander] brings out the charm and downright strangeness of the defiantly normal.” ― Wall Street Journal

“Enger is a writer to be appreciated by anyone who cares about words.” — Seattle Times

Praise for Peace Like a River

“Here is an author we can trust and who we are willing to follow anywhere. Enger strikes just the right balance of instinctive storytelling, narrative play and pretty prose.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“Book lovers inclined to complain that novelists don’t write gripping yarns anymore would do well to pick up a copy of Peace Like a River, a compelling blend of traditional and artfully offbeat storytelling . . . a miracle well worth witnessing.”—Boston Globe

“The narrative picks up power and majesty, then thunders to a tragic, yet joyous, climax.” — People

“Gripping… Filled with sharp prose and vividly realized scenes, [Peace Like a River] has the makings of that rarest commodity: the literate bestseller.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Enger is a masterful storyteller . . . possessed of a seemingly effortless facility for the stiletto-sharp drawing of wholly believable characters.” — Chicago Tribune

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Sample

first do no harm

HERE AT THE BEGINNING it must be said the End was on everyone’s mind.

For example look at my friend Labrino who showed up one gusty spring night. It was moonless and cold, wind droning in the eaves, waves on Superior standing up high and ramming into the seawall. Lark and I lived two blocks off the water and you could feel those waves in the floorboards. Labrino had to bang on the door like a lunatic just to get my attention.

Still, it was good he knocked at all. There were times Labrino was so melancholy he couldn’t bring himself to raise his knuckles, and then he might stand motionless on the back step until one of us noticed he was there. It was unnerving enough in the daytime, but once it happened when I couldn’t sleep and was prowling the kitchen for leftovers. Three in the morning—just when you want to see a slumping hairy silhouette right outside your house. When the shock wore off I opened the door and told him not to do that anymore.

But this time he knocked, then came in shaking off his coat and settled murmuring into the breakfast nook. I knew Labrino because he owned a tavern on the edge of town, the Lantern, where the band I was in played most weekends. He was lonely and kind and occasionally rude by accident, but above all things he was a worried man. He said, “Now tell me what you make of this comet business.”

He meant the Tashi Comet, named for the Tibetan astronomer who spotted an anomaly in the deep-space software. From its path so far, Mr. Tashi believed it would sweep past Earth in thirteen months. He predicted dazzling beauty visible for weeks. A sungrazer he called it, in an article headlined The Celestial Event of Our Time.

I admitted to Labrino that I was awfully excited. In fact I’d driven down to the Greenstone Fair and picked up a heavy old set of German binoculars with a tripod mount. Didn’t even haggle but paid the asking price. I wanted to be ready.

Labrino said, “These comets never bring luck to a living soul, that’s all I know.”

“How could you know that? Besides, they don’t have to bring luck. They just have to show up once in a while. Think where these comets have been! I’ve waited my whole life to see one.”

He said, “You know what happened the last time Halley’s went past?”

“Before my day.”

“Oh, I’ve read about this,” said Labrino. Whenever things seemed especially fearsome to him, his great bushy head came forward and his eyes acquired a prophetic glint. “Nineteen eighty-six, a terrible year. Right out of the gate that space shuttle blew up. Challenger. Took off from Florida, big crowd, a huge success for a minute or so—then pow, that rocket turns to a trail of white smoke. Everybody in the world watching on TV.”

I told Labrino I was fairly sure Halley’s Comet was not involved in the Challenger explosion.

He said, “You know what else happened? Russian nuclear meltdown. One day it’s, ‘Look, there’s the comet!’ Next day Chernobyl turns to poison soup. Kills the workers sent to clean it up. Kills everything for a thousand miles. Rivers, wolves, house cats, earthworms to a depth of nineteen inches. Swedish reindeer setting off the Geigers. I wouldn’t be so anxious for this if I were you.”

I couldn’t really blame Labrino. The world was so old and exhausted that many now saw it as a dying great-grand on a surgical table, body decaying from use and neglect, mind fading down to a glow. If Lark were here she would prop him right up and he wouldn’t even know it was happening. But she was late getting home from the shop, and I, like a moron, felt annoyed and impatient, also weirdly protective of a traveling space rock, so I said, “It still wasn’t the comet’s fault.”

“I’m not claiming causation,” said Labrino, his skin pinking. “I’m saying there are signs and wonders. The minute these comets appear in the heavens, all kinds of calamities start chugging away on Earth.”

I opened my mouth, then remembered a few things about my friend. He had a grown son living in a tent on top of a landfill in Seattle. A daughter he’d not heard from in two years. His wife had enough of him long ago, and he was blind in one eye from when he tried to help a man crouched by the road and got beaten unconscious for his trouble. That Labrino was even operative—that he ran a decent tavern and hired live music and employed two bartenders and a cook who made good soup—testified to his grit.

I said, “Is there anything you’d like to hear, Jack?”

He lifted his head. “Yes, that would be nice—I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be such awful company. It’s just the times. The times are so unfriendly. Play me something, would you, Rainy?”

My name is Rainier, after the western mountain, but most people shorten it to the dominant local weather.

I fetched my bass, a five-string Fender Jazz, and my tiny cube of a practice amp. Labrino was calmed by deep tones. They helped him settle. Sometimes he seemed like a man just barely at the surface with nothing to keep him afloat, but I’d learned across many evenings that he was buoyed by simple progressions. Nothing jittery or complicated, which I wasn’t skilled enough to play in any case. My teacher was a venerable redbeard named Diego who explained the ancient principle “first do no harm” from early bassist Hippocrates: lock into the beat, play the root, don’t put the groove at risk. Diego said a clean bass line is barely heard yet gives to each according to their need. If I played well then Labrino saw hillsides, moving water, his wife Eva before she got sick of him. There in the kitchen he relaxed into himself, eyes closed, mouth slightly open, until I feared he might crumple and fall to the floor.

Thankfully Lark arrived before that could happen, gusting into the kitchen like a microburst. Laughing and breathless, her hair shaken loose, she had a paper bag in hand and a secret in her eyes.

“Why, Jack Labrino,” she said. “I thought you had forgotten all about us,” which pleased him and changed the temperature in there. Right away he dropped his apprehensions and started talking like a regular person, even as she went straight through the kitchen and set her things in the other room. Out of Labrino’s sight but not mine, she shed her jacket and sent a sly smile over her shoulder.

I picked up the tempo, increased the volume and landed on a quick straight-eight rhythm, which turned into the beginning of an old pop-chart anthem I knew Labrino liked. He grinned—a wide grin, at which Lark danced back into the kitchen and held out her hand. Labrino took it and got up and followed her lead. She whisked him about, I kept playing, and Labrino kept losing the steps and then finding them again—it was good to see him prance around like a man revived. By the time I brought the tune to a close Labrino was out of breath and scarcely noticed as Lark snagged his coat and lay it over his shoulders. With genuine warmth she thanked him for coming and suggested dinner next week, then he was out the door and turning back to smile as he went.

“Thanks for getting home when you did,” I said in her ear. We’d stepped outside to see him off, his coat whickering in the hard wind.

“You were doing just fine. But you’re welcome all the same.”

Labrino made it to his car, eased himself into it. It seemed to take a long time for the car to start, the lights to come on. Pulling out he waved, then drove slowly down the street.

I felt my lungs relax. I liked Labrino, wanted him to be all right. But I also really wanted him to go home, and be all right at home.

Lark said, “Sometimes your friends choose you.”

She took my hand. Her eyes flared wide then got stealthy, and at the bridge of her nose appeared two upward indents like dashes made by a pencil. It was irresistible, my favorite expression—of all her looks it built the most suspense, and it was just for me.

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About the authors

Leif Enger

Leif Enger

Leif Enger worked as a reporter and producer for Minnesota Public Radio for nearly twenty years before leaving to write fiction full-time. He lives in Minnesota with his wife Robin.


Reviews

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5

1,079 global ratings

switterbug/Betsey Van Horn

switterbug/Betsey Van Horn

5

Dystopian adventure, and literary

Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2024

Verified Purchase

The story here was geographically massive in scope---in that Enger covers a lot of earth, as well as the inland sea of the Great Lakes, and the Canadian Slate Islands. Nothing is inert or stagnant, the movement in this journey is formidable. The sea is rollicking and wild, tearing up rocks, the winds tossing it even more, and the near-future dystopian-esque land and life has been drained by climate change. In this future epoch is an inexorable, credible vision of life and death. The main characters are Rainy (a bass guitarist in a band and all-around great husband) and his wife, Lark—a bookstore owner in the midst of an era when people no longer read—only the “ancients” open books. She is also a masterfully skilled sailor.

Rainy and Lark live happily in (fictional) Icebridge, Michigan, and then a young dude stranger shows up with car troubles and other troubles, including a nitrous oxide habit. Events unfold and danger lurks, a villain is referred to, and the reader is aware that things are about to get real for the couple, and their new friend brought trouble with him, however inadvertently. Best of all is this inscrutable author—Lark’s favorite—named Molly Thorn, whose work Lark adores. She is trying to obtain all her books—there’s a whole myth surrounding Molly, not the least of which, is she dead or alive? Does it matter?

No spoilers here, so I will just dance around the plot so I don’t spoil anyone’s discovery. Rainy is about to go on a journey worthy of Orpheus. From Lark, he learned how to sail, and even gained some advanced knowledge, and he was a quick study. Enger thoroughly saturates us into the inland sea, the Great Lakes region, lots and lots of boat v water, too! The setting itself is a character; I’ve never felt such an unremitting sea that delivers like a determined antagonist, pushing up against a relentless protagonist in a way that makes the sea almost human and Rainy practically a human halyard.

It's the near future, but I suspect that Enger purposely refrained from giving an actual time period. 25 years from now? 50? It’s hard to say, but it feels immanent and authentic, an era that can’t be forestalled indefinitely, and has come with more warnings. The class system is worse than it is now, with the rich folks living on the east or west coast. Reading is done by “ancients” and there are odd weather hazards/storms we’ve yet to experience in our lifetime—like bursts or microbursts, and other hair-raising incidents that I don’t want to give away.

New times bring more alarming medicines and treatments, including “Compliance” meds that compel the user to comply with societal “norms.” Aggressive meds, also--a cache of them is worth a pirate’s plunder. You can purchase a modern-day hemlock drug, which removes you from this life to whatever is next (they don’t call it straight-up death) and allows you to spend your final hours in an elated mood, and then you quietly, painlessly stop breathing in this life--and these drugs are worth a lot of money, and is run by a dangerous man and his crew. People seeking this drug believe that we move onto another type of existence, not permanent erasure.

Rainy’s adventures while sailing the boat are many and detailed with both menace and beauty. It won’t take long before the reader feels waterlogged, in a way that sluices you into the story. I felt Enger’s characters right at my heels, or my shoulder, and in my heart.

“Earlier I’d begun to imagine the lake on my side, a protective demigod, the queen herself, adorned with thunder, stepping between me and those who’d have my skin. So much for all that. Deceived is what I felt… Superior had forgot that she was a lake at all—no, she was like her sister the North Atlantic and her cousins the hurricanes who pull down houses and urge barns into the sea.”

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11 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

Kindle Customer

5

Leif Enger at his best!

Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2024

Verified Purchase

This was such an intriguing story told by the best storyteller. It is very different in plot from Peace Like a River, but just like Peace Like a River in that it is fantastic reading and you will think about it a long time after you are done.

Kay D. Day

Kay D. Day

5

I enjoyed this book immensely

Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2024

Verified Purchase

Especially since it took place along and on beautiful Lake Superior. The interesting places and people that Rainey meets along his journey to reconnect with his love. Apparently, this story unfolds in a future time where suicide pills are available because the future for so many is dim. This is also the backdrop of the novel which makes the story even more interesting.

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DC gemini

DC gemini

5

Just what we need

Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2024

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This book was wonderful. Although it should be sad, it is hopeful And the writing is simply beautiful. It has one of my favorite sentences ever: *The wind rembered ice "

James B. Carlen

James B. Carlen

5

Well written, compelling characters

Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2024

Verified Purchase

I admit I have read all of Leif Enger’s books and enjoyed all of them but this book is as good as his first book, which was fantastic. Well developed characters, only somewhat dystopian future (feels just a few bad decisions away from where we are now) and interesting world. Highly recommend.

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