I Cheerfully Refuse
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A 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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Community Reviews
What’s it about?
This story is set in the upper Midwest sometime in the bleak future. Rainy and his wife Lark have found happiness in their small community when trouble finds them. Rainy takes refuge on Lake Superior. We meet a small cast of characters that fill Rainy’s life with humor, kindness, and adventure.
What did it make me think about?
The beauty in the small things.
Should I read it?
“Peace Like a River”, by Leif Enger, was a favorite of mine from years ago. This novel is totally unlike it- so I wasn’t sure what to think. But I held on and was rewarded with a warm-hearted adventure story set in a grim future. Leif Enger’s optimism and faith in humanity shines through, despite the inhumanity the characters encounter. Most of all I couldn’t help but love the characters Leif Enger has created in this novel. I was really between and 8 1/2 and a 9 on this one- but I cheerfully landed on the 9.
Quote-
“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.”
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