I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger
Published by Grove Press
Publication date: April 2, 2024
Genres: Fiction, Dystopian, Literary, Suspense
Bookshop, Amazon
I’m once again fortunate enough to have a book find me and sweep me away despite my proclaimed inability to focus. It’s Leif Enger’s I Cheerfully Refuse an elegant novel of dystopia, mystery, and literary fiction. It’s a not-so-distant point in America’s future where climate change and political upheaval have erased all familiar landscapes, leaving what was once a network of communities into fractured small towns or outposts. Rainer and his wife Lark live happily in one such town on the shores of Lake Superior until their simple life is irrevocably changed by the appearance of a young man they take in as a boarder.
Rainy is the bass guitarist in a local band and Lark owns a bookshop that shares space with what’s left of a bakery. Life is simple and while uncertainty lurks it’s not enough to encroach on their way of life or happiness. It’s clear their new boarder is most likely running away from indentured servitude in one of the big cities, but the couple sees he’s hurt and want to help. Things go horribly wrong and Rainy is left escaping town in his small boat, trusting the malevolent and stormy waters of Lake Superior to be safer than what he leaves behind. He goes, hoping to find the peaceful hidden harbor he and Lark had discovered years ago. And that she’ll be waiting for him there.
I Cheerfully Refuse is a character study of one man searching to regain the love and life that have been lost to him. The majority of the novel takes place on the boat in the numerous coves, harbors, and inlets that dot the shores of the great lake. The towns where Rainy docks highlight the disrepair and Wild West attitudes of this new America. He uses money for gas and groceries, but is soon reduced to bartering away prized possessions. One trade he makes is to save Sol, a 9-year-old girl from a ‘guardian’ who’s using her as his sexual property. She’s an illiterate child as feral and cunning as the world she lives in, but she provides ballast to Rainy’s weary heart as he tries to outrun the dark forces chasing him.
The story told in the novel is a revelatory mashup between The Iliad, Station Eleven, and The Road— the dangerous journey of Odysseus with the vindictive and capricious nature of the gods being replaced by that of a cadre of billionaires who run the country. What’s left for everyone else is a black-market economy, deprivation, militarization, and a vigilante system of justice. For an increasing number of citizens, the only hope is a better afterlife. Suicides are on the rise thanks to Willow; a pharmaceutical drug called a “bright star in the market of despair”.
I Cheerfully Refuse is the title of a rare manuscript, written by a female farmer and poet in the mid-20th century. Lark has been seeking it all her life and its arrival in their home is the beginning of the end. The connection between the book’s content and the title’s meaning is only fleetingly mentioned, leaving the book and its author to feel like an afterthought. The same could be said about Lark. Her time in the story is far too brief and while it’s the catalyst launching the novel’s plot her absence is felt. It may be that both the title’s subtlety and the absence of Lark were purposeful in being brief and amorphous, but I wanted more of both.
My personal desires aside, this is a story beautifully crafted with all the right words. It’s a novel of hard truths set in a depressing future, but in its scope and resolution Enger seems to be indicating another way to survive, with Rainy as its embodiment. He neither rebels nor acquiesces, but engages the world with honor, even when there is none to be found in those who confront him. There are dark realities within I Cheerfully Refuse, but they’re lightened by a sense of hope that will provoke thought long after the book is finished.
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Oh I’m glad you thought this was good …. I just put a hold in for it at the library. Man I remember reading his novel Peace Like a River so long ago. But I liked it.
I keep thinking about this one. It feels very relevant to the times we’re in now.
This is one of my favorites so far this year. I’ve enjoyed two of his other works as well and am now looking forward to being a completist. Some of the sentences were so beautifully written that I had to sit with them a moment. I agree that the darkness in the story was balanced by Rainey’s humanity, and it ultimately left me feeling hopeful.
Did you cringe reading about the first illiterate president?
Cringed or cried, I’m not sure which. It’s not like our choices are much better now. Sigh.
I’ve only ever read Virgil Wander, which of his other books do you recommend?