I Cheerfully Refuse

4.4 | 1,187 ratings

Price: 3.99

Last update: 09-16-2024

About this item

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 more than a million copies and captured audiences’ hearts around the globe. Now comes a new milestone in this boldly imaginative author’s 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. Amid 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.

“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

nfmgirl

A hopeful and lyrical story

Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2024

This "not so distant" world is ruled by the wealthiest. The working society who struggles to eke out an existence lives on the periphery of the wealthiest individuals who fly in on helicopters to enjoy their waterfront living.

Against this dark backdrop of inequality, hard-scrabble life, crumbling society, and an earth clinging tenuously to survival, we meet Rainy as he reminisces about his life with Lark and what led to him sailing around Lake Superior in search of her.

Rainy (short for Rainier) is a big, gentle bear of a man who is totally devoted to his wife and their life together. There's such a sweetness and gentleness between Rainy and Lark. This is a romance for the ages against a dark landscape.

Rainy meets Lark after basically stalking her when she was a librarian. Thanks to Lark, Rainy discovers the joy of books and the worlds to be found within them.

And Rainy falls almost instantly in love with Lark just by her voice, her kindness, the way she can intuitively tell what a person needs and make the perfect book recommendation for them. His love for her grows through the years, as does their respect and care of one another.

Rainy is friends with a local bar owner (where Rainy often plays bass guitar) known simply as Labrino, a rather melancholy guy. "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."

But he is also a man of grit and endurance. And thanks to Labrino, we have one of my favorite scenes from the book when Lark arrives home to find her husband soothingly playing guitar for Labrino.

"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."

Lark is so empathetic, so intuitive and kind-hearted, and she knows just how to give someone what they need in that moment.

And then Lark brings home a stray by the name of Kellan who she's taken on as a room boarder. Lark describes him as "Enigmatic. Obscure." Rainy describes Kellan as having a "kid brother quality" and "plucky doomed optimism" that made you want "to take care of him". And Kellan needs someone to take care of him. He is running from his past and needs the soft landing that Rainy and Lark offer him for a time.

The idyllic life that Rainy and Lark have built together is shattered, leaving Rainy living on the shifting winds of Lake Superior aboard the boat Flower.

The author is a skilled wordsmith and this story is well-crafted prose, creating a world that is equal amounts beauty and tragedy. Nature and nature's beauty is a recurring theme, as well as her indiscriminate wrath. I noted how even many of the character's names have the earthy feel of nature to them (i.e. Rainier/Rainy, Lark, Sol/Sun, Thorn, Beezie, and even the boat's name Flower).

But there is also a darkness in this dying world where you can find both the best and the worst of humanity. "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."

My final word: This book is "simple" in the very best meaning of the word. It's stripped down to the basics and helps you find joy in the simple things. It's optimistic and hopeful even amid tragedy, and... atmospheric. You get the sense that Rainy and Lark were destined; their love was written in the stars.
"Yet we were also, as Lark liked to whisper in the dark, quixotes, by which she meant not always sensible. Open to the wondrous. Curious in the manner of those lucky so far."

And you learn through their story that sometimes things have to get really dark for you to see the light. It's just a beautiful story. Let Rainy take your hand and lead you to the light.

C. Perez

Dark dystopia shines like a beacon with hope

Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2024

3.5*
In a not-so distant future, after cycles of floods, droughts, famine, and societal collapse, Rainier “Rainy” and Lark are a happy couple who live two blocks away from Lake Superior, Michigan, in the town of Icebridge. Rainy is a part-time bass musician, and Lark co-owns a bakery/bookstore. Occasionally they rent their attic to itinerant travelers, and is one of those—an indentured servant escapee from a medicine ship who is on his way to Canada— who brings trouble to their door, for this young “squelette”, as those escaped servants are commonly referred to, has stolen valuable goods from a very ruthless man. Rainy’s odyssey across Lake Superior escaping his pursuers aboard a boat—on his way back to his wife— will make him cross paths with an assortment of characters who will make him recover hope and believe in love again.

This fast paced narrative is easy to read and solid four stars almost from the start, however, the story occasionally bogs down towards the middle and also towards the end, reason why I settled for a 3.5* rating. This first person narrative jumps right into the action, with no preamble, no information dump. The descriptions are very visual, the characters colorful, crisp and interesting; they sound like people one would love to know. Even the villains have depth.

I Cheerfully Refuse is a dystopian novel with a lot of darkness but also inspiring feats of heroism and survival. A novel within a novel, set in a world where books are rare as a consequence of being vilified, banned, and burned en-masse, this novel is an ode to books and reading, to the power of friendship and storytelling, and the power of love and hope to heal all wounds.

A tighter editing focusing on reducing the amount of nautical terms would have done wonders for this book. It’s a pity I had to subtract from its overall rating. Despite its heavy topics, I found I Cheerfully Refuse very entertaining and enjoyable.

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