I Cheerfully Refuse

I was cheerfully confused for the first third of the story. I wasn’t sure of the century but it’s after ours where books and stories are cherished as is the relationship of Lark and Rainy. But it’s also a dark and dismal time. People committing suicide to escape the reality. Then there is the dreaded day which begins a series of events Rainy must run from and leads him to Lake Superior in his sailboat, Flower.
During this perilous journey, he meets many seasoned folks and misfits along the way all the while searching for his own ghost.

The writing at times soothing and ethereal; at others, brutal and bashing. As dark as the story was, the beauty is in this prose.

I am now convinced I am a dystopian fan.
4⭐️

A beautiful dystopian novel.. by the author of Peace Like A River!
The world has changed, evil people are in charge including police.. fresh food very limited, a comet is coming that brings illness, books and booksellers are treasonous, climate change has brought dead bodies up to float on Lake Superior.
Rainy, a musician…takes to Lake Superior in an old boat of his to escape the predators that killed his wife Lark in their home. This then becomes quite an adventure with huge challenges and hardships.
He comes across a nine year old girl, Sol at one of his stops on land who was being abused by an evil man and she comes along on the rest of his journey.
Loved the characters… even Lake Superior seemed like a character!
A novel with a huge heart!

Thank you to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic/Morgan Entrekin for the Arc!

There were times when I found this story so chaotic and confusing without fully understanding what had happened. I kept wondering how things got to be the way they were, wondering who these “astronauts”, the people in charge were, these truly evil people. Maybe the chaos and confusion was meant to reflect the apocalyptic nature of the time, maybe Enger is trying to warn us about evil focrces that are around us today. I’m really not sure. It’s unnerving, to say the least.

However, there’s much to love about this dystopian novel, especially some of the characters. Rainy, a bear of a man with such a gentle heart, expressing so much with his music. It’s moving to see how compassionate he is with children, how he protects and saves a 9 year old girl named Sol from a life of abuse on multiple occasions. I love his wife Lark, too, her love of books, how everyone loves her, how Rainy became a reader because of her. Lark exudes such hope in spite of what is happening. Sol is a bright spot in keeping with her name and gives Rainy some much needed hope in his grief.

The presence of the future through a dream, perhaps the spiritual moment of connection Rainy was searching for, the beauty and lure of his music, of the written word, of natural occurrences and the courage and resilience of people under duress, do bring hope. These things outweigh what at times left me wondering . This is worth reading for the memorable characters and the writing which is as lovely as in his other novels. Peace Like a River, though, which is one of my favorite books remains my favorite by Leif Enger.

I was grateful to have read this with my book buddy , Diane.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher through both NetGalley.

T.S. Eliot claimed, “This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper.” That whimper is the sound of me being buried under novels about it.

This week I’m recovering from one apocalyptic novel, reviewing a new one, reading a forthcoming one and wearily eyeing two more. Clearly, we’ve arrived at the future in which everyone writes about the collapse of civilization for 15 minutes. If the world is really about to end, I wish it would hurry up.

The strange thing about doomsday, though, is its infinite adaptability. Note, for instance, how graciously the eschatology of previous millennia swelled to accommodate fears of nuclear annihilation in the 20th century. And now climate change, seasoned with a soupçon of political tyranny, promises to cook all our anxieties in a final vat of despondency. The result is a literary doom loop that keeps spinning faster. Over the last few years, I’ve read so many dystopian novels that I had to look up the plural spelling of “apocalypse.”

It’s comforting to imagine that the persistence of this bleak genre is a perverse kind of optimism: Despero, ergo sum! After all, we’ve survived long enough for Sandra Newman to publish a retelling of “1984” called “Julia.” When I first read George Orwell’s terrifying book in the 1970s, I worried we’d never make it to 1984, let alone to the 21st century.

But now that Leif Enger has written an apocalyptic novel, the world may actually be coming to an end. Enger, you’ll remember, launched his career in early September 2001 with a mega-bestseller called “Peace Like a River” — an inspiring adventure about a family that regularly experiences miracles. As the twin towers smoldered, coldblooded critics recoiled at his novel’s unabashed spirituality, but I thought it was divine.

Almost 25 years later, Enger’s idealism is contending with a world even grimmer than the Armageddon envisioned at the end of a Trump-branded Bible. His new novel, titled “I Cheerfully Refuse” (a bit too on the nose), describes a future swamped by climate change, economic disparity and political decay. Sixteen wealthy families — so out of touch that they’re referred to as “astronauts” — own all the “mineral rights and satellite clusters and news factories and prisons and most clean water and such shipping as remained.” How comfortingly familiar!

But other trendlines from our time have reached their inevitable conclusion in the wasteland Enger describes: Pandemics have thinned the population. Indentured servitude is back in vogue and the government provides “compliance therapeutics” to keep workers docile and obedient. Nitrous oxide has become a common form of self-medication, and that’s the least of it: A drug called Willow, “a rising star in the market of despair,” is ingested by individuals, entire families and sometimes whole neighborhoods to commit suicide.

Naturally, these calamities have been ushered in by a deep suspicion of learning, particularly of literature. Fundamentalists have closed.....

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...

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

Set in the near future, this is a dystopian novel that revolves around climate change, which then leads to the collapse of society in many ways including the government, laws, and simple niceties. It’s a free-for-all in many ways, but there is also more to this story than that. A story of love, and loss. A story of family, the ones we choose, and who choose us in return.

A beautifully written story, at times poetic in the way that it flows even when the story begins to get darker in nature. As this begins, the story revolves around Rainy and Lark, a beat up and ancient advance copy of a book that arrives with the title of ’I Cheerfully Refuse’, and a man who is seeking shelter, and Lark offers him a room, with fatal results.

Meanwhile, outside their relatively isolated home, there is chaos virtually everywhere, which leads to Rainy setting sail, hoping to avoid those who would wish to harm him. When he stops at one of the towns on the coast for supplies, he soon finds himself with a girl who hides in his boat.

’The lake was dark and flat. It was a blackboard to the end of sight, and any story might be written upon the surface.’

At times this has tense moments, as well as moments of worry, sorrow and heartbreak, but there are also moments of generosity, caring, affection and perhaps above all, hope.

Pub Date: 02 Apr 2024

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Grove Atlantic, Grove Press

It took me an unusually long time to read this book—there were other urgent matters in my life that unfortunately competed with the urgent matters in this book (but I would have rather been hunkered down reading). Ironically, we had a bit of flood and water damage to our house, right as I am reading this book that largely takes place in untamed waters on a leaky boat!

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.”

The characters in this book, Rainy, Lark and later a young girl Sol, drew me right into this story. Which I found to be a very good thing as there was so much I was confused about. It’s set n the future, but how far into the future is not stated. Not too far, I think. Then it appears that our government is no more and we are being ruled by a group called the Astronauts, but who they are is also unknown, just that they and those associated with them are not very nice people. Also, people don’t read anymore, no new books written but Lark goes from place to place gathering left books for her bookstore. Yes, she opens a bookstore for those who want to read.

Then tragedy strikes and Rainy finds himself alone. Heartbroken, alone, adrift in life he decides to take his boat and travel to the place that he and Lark had previously traveled. It is where the once found the spirit of Molly Thorne who wrote the book, I cheerfully refuse. This journey is the nexus of the story, what he finds and who he meets, will set him on a new course.

Despite some of the confusion Angela and I both felt at times, I’ve come to believe that the reader being adrift is meant to mimic both Rainey’s feelings and his journey. Or so I believe, hope I’ve gotten that right. Anyway, a very different book from this author but one I very much enjoyed.

"It's taken all my life to learn protection is the promise you can't make."

Confession: I went into this book with enormous expectations. The blurb tells of a sentient Lake Superior sailed by a man searching for his wife, and rising corpses, and lunatic storms, etc. It conjured in my mind a book that would be strange and surreal, filled with magical realism amid its heavy literary themes.

But alas . . .

Lake Superior is merely believed to be sentient.

The rising corpses are indeed corpses rising (bodies surfacing in warming waters), but they do not reanimate or walk the earth.

There is an epic storm. Unruly, yes, but swiftly overcome.

Rainy does set out to find his wife, but that's a metaphorical use of the word "find" because .

I can appreciate Enger's talent as a writer. He never states anything simply or with bare terms. His protagonist has his own distinct way of speaking, of deferring to lesser used terms to describe the mundane.

But. . .

I wanted the sentient lake to feel, or even speak. I hoped the rising corpses would give chase. I wished the chapters titled "stubby golems on the fretboard" actually had golems, or that the chapter titled "skeletons climbing stairs in the rain" had actual skeletons climbing stairs in the rain instead of emaciated humans ambling briefly up the stairs.

This all sounds like a me problem; I was given the impression the book was something else and that shaped my reading experience.

Here's what you can expect from this book: a slow, quiet pace; a man's metaphorical search for his wife (it's about 85 pages before he actually sets off); robust language, some beautiful imagery, lots of descriptions of playing bass or sailing, and a lake that occasionally grows unwieldy with high winds or large waves.

For as much as the protagonist centers his journey on finding his wife, the end of the book is unexpectedly understated.

I'd recommend this book to readers interested in a slow, meditative read grounded in reality that touches on grief and a longing for connection.

--

My deepest gratitude to Grove Atlantic for sending me a gorgeous finished copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book slapped me upside the head, made me sob, and I said thank you.

What a gorgeous, moving, devastating, yet hopeful story! I had never heard of Enger prior to picking this up, but he is now an auto-buy author for me.

I read all ten finalists in the sci-fi category of the GoodReads Choice Awards for a reading vlog (including this one) & you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/n6kBSG7po9Y

I Cheerfully Refuse is near-future dystopian/climate destruction/societal collapse fiction. Not quite apocalyptic, but it's certainly a world where social structures are falling apart, and social rules have gone out the window. A few individuals and companies have filled the power vacuums left behind, using the chaos to their advantage, and the president of the United States is illiterate, actively pushing the idea that books and reading are evil. It's such an absorbing book—not only because this felt like it could be our reality (in North America) in five years if things go *very* wrong, but also because, despite the devastation, the grief, and the frustration of a world falling apart due to pure human stupidity and greed, we have a main character who is a teddy bear of a human - so endearing, so relatable, so lost. Instead of focusing on the characters who are the big power players, or the chosen one who's going to fix the world, we're following a regular man. A man forced out of his comfort zone against his will, who has to find a new path as he grapples with grief in a changing world. It's such a beautiful and surprising journey, and I loved it with my whole heart. He's just trying to survive and find his own little pocket of peace in a world that is falling apart all around him, and it's not going smoothly.

This story mostly takes place on a little sailboat, travelling across the Great Lakes, bouncing between the coasts of the U.S. and Canada. The setting made it feel oddly familiar, both nostalgic and unsettling as someone who grew up on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes and has spent a lot of time on a few of the many bays in a tiny sailboat of my own (well, my Dad's. But anyway!)

This book was absolutely beautifully written with vivid, heartwarming, and wholesome characters. It explores the dark side of humanity - our propensity to cruelty, greed, and mob violence, but it also highlights humanity's remarkable capacity for resilience, generosity, and love. The characters are complex, even the villains, and the relationships are the stuff of found family dreams.

This is a heartbreaking read in many ways. Still, it leaves you with a tiny glimmer of hope that makes you feel that somehow, if we could just remember we're all in this together, to help each other instead of trying to climb over each other in a race to hell on earth, we'd maybe have a chance to make it out okay.

I would highly recommend I Cheerfully Refuse. Go read it now. You won't regret it.

This was one of my favourite books of 2024! You can hear reviews of the top 12 here:
https://youtu.be/MNGwxmhSVgc

This was included in my Top 10 Favourite Sci-Fi Books and Series video:
https://youtu.be/2v0hcBS9zlQ

“With Willow infiltrating the landscape and its stories coming thick and fast—these explorers getting younger and more innocent—I felt desperate to reach through time. I wanted to find these kids in a moment of calm. To take their lapels gently in my hands and say, “Better is right here.” I still hear it in Lark’s voice. Better is here. Stay, and make it better.”

Trigger/Content Warnings: child abuse, child sexual abuse, torture, lynching, medical experimentation, murder, suicide (including of children), suicide pact, death (including children), partner loss, pandemic, confinement, mob violence, religious extremism, corporate slavery/indentured servitude, climate change, starvation, grief

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PBB Book Club

You know how some people are such good friends that they do whatever they can to make their besties happy? They might, for example, bring them soup when they're sick or take them out for their birthday. They might call for no reason, just to say hi.

Some might try to play matchmaker, helping their friend find true love.

I'm not that friend. I've never played Cupid, for a friend or anyone else. Nor do I pick up the phone.

I can, however, imagine how the conversation might play out, the day after a blind date.

Really Good Friend (RGF): So how did it go?? I can't wait to hear all about it, I know it must have been fabulous!!!! Now spill!!!!

Other Person (OP): Um, what do you want to know?

RGF: Everything!!! Did you like them, did you talk for hours, did you have sex???????

OP giggles, biting their thumbnail.

RGF: Oh come on, I can't stand the suspense!!!!! What did you think of Finley?!?!?!

OP: Um, well, they're, um..... nice?

That right there should tell RGF that Cupid's arrow didn't pierce any hearts. Maybe they got along, maybe they didn't. Probably they just waited it out, frequently checking their phones to pass the time.

It wasn't necessarily bad but it could have been better. OP doesn't feel like they wasted their time, because Finley was nice enough.... but there weren't any sparks.

That's how it was with me and this book. It was nice. I don't feel like I wasted my time but I never fell in love with it. Never felt anything more than mild interest, enough to turn the pages, but with frequent phone checking.

As OP might say, it wasn't Finley, it was them. And I say, it wasn't the book, it was me. I just wasn't in the mood for sweetness. From the synopsis, I thought this book would be darker.

It takes a special talent to write about such bleak times and events with a sense of hope and.... niceness.

As with the author's Virgil Wander, the story is more about the characters than the plot. Enger does characters well, fleshing them out and making them interesting. Not enough for me to really feel much for any of them, but again, that might just be me.

Some really shitty, awful things happen and yet the author writes with a sense of wholesomeness. The Road meets Little House on the Prairie.

It's not the first time I've gone on a nice-enough date with a book and I'm sure it won't be my last. If I was a really good friend, I'd know exactly who would love this book and thus whom to pass it on to.

As noted above however, I'm not an RGF.

I’ll be thinking about this one for a while. Enger’s character development, wordsmithing, and futuristic backdrop made this book such a compelling read. I think it’s his best yet.

"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."

Enger's writing is a brilliant literary volley of light and dark, both anthem and dirge. "I Cheerfully Refuse" is part dystopian thriller, part mystery, part nautical tale, part love story, part ode to books, and 100% magical. I can't recommend it highly enough. Move it to the top of your to read pile immediately!

Absolutely stunning and remarkable. I would read it again in a heartbeat. I will…

Beautifully written, this novel is as heart-wrenching as it is quietly inspiring.

"I Cheerfully Refuse" is set in a near-future America where societal collapse has ensued from fateful, disastrous, and irreversible climate change, leading to a dystopian reality governed by a corrupt elite. Through an imaginative loose retelling of the story of Orpheus, our main character Rainy embarks on a journey across Lake Superior that transforms from a personal escape from violence into a broader odyssey that sees him and a young girl, Sol, inadvertently becoming beacons of hope in a desperate, lawless world.

Leif Enger has written a narrative rich in lyrical prose exploring themes of deep love, loss, resilience, and the indomitable human spirit. Lake Superior was so vividly described and held such a prominent impact that I felt it was an independent character. Each of the other characters felt like a real person you might meet post-apocalypse, though not all you would want to. After a slower-paced start, the journey Rainy and Sol take is compelling and paints a rich mosaic of humanity.

For me, there were parallels to stories in Last of Us (show - I never played the original game), Andor (show - I don’t even know if there is a game/book), and the Greek myth of Orpheus. Additionally, I quite like this review from the WSJ, where other good parallels are made.

All in all, this will be going into my 5⭐️ books of 2024 list.

Thanks to Netgalley, RB Media, Leif Enger, and David Aaron Baker for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Oh goodness this was painful. I picked this up, to be honest, because I loved the cover 😂. And I also tend to enjoy dystopian fiction.

It started off interesting enough for the first couple of chapters, but I never really got into it, and never connected with the characters. Fairly quickly I was finding myself zoning out and skimming more than reading. It’s VERY slow paced. (After struggling with keeping my attention on it, I tried switching to audiobook and the narration is insanely slow too. I sped it up to 1.30x and that was STILL very slow but I couldn’t speed it up more than that without it being too distorted.) I usually enjoy slower paced books but this was rough.

It’s a dystopian world but I never understood why or how it got that way. The plot meanders aimlessly, is super difficult to follow and it’s very depressing. You expect a dystopian novel to be depressing to an extent of course, but there’s usually a POINT to the depressing elements and there never seemed to be one in this. It was JUST depressing.

It reminded me of James Joyce but with more punctuation, and not on purpose.

How does Enger do it? How does he write books that are simultaneously about the small pleasures of a simple life (a good breakfast, a chat with a friend, sitting on a porch in the evening) and also about huge, world-shaking events like murder, or tramautic brain injuries?! If you asked me to describe any of his books, I'd be like, "Oh, this is great, it's so beautiful, it's about this young boy who admires his father, and the boy has asthma . . ." or "Oh, it's about this gentle giant of a man who plays the bass and whose wife runs a small bookshop . . ." At no point in the description would I say, "The boy's brother is wanted and they're trying to race the cops across the Badlands to catch him first, also his father is a literal saint? Maybe?" or "It's set in the near future and civilization is crumbling and there's murder and medical experimentation." (These books are Peace Like a River and I Cheerfully Refuse, btw.)

I mean. How does he do it?

This book is gorgeous. It's glorious. It's quiet. It's full of music.

It made me want to fry some eggs in butter and eat them with a piece of homemade bread before sitting down to savor a book of poetry.

Also it stressed me the hell out because it's about a very real possible future in which the proudly illiterate bomb bookstores, and booksellers and librarians try to save books from "fundie bonfires." A future where the disparity between the 1% and the rest of the world is so extreme that one of the most steady jobs is a six year indentured servitude gig that will most likely involve being given a drug to make you compliant. A drug that is also given to many children if they score too high on the "feral scale."

And yet I wouldn't say it's science fiction. It's just . . . a story about humanity. About society. About one man on a journey, on a sailboat.

First off, I love the title and the beautiful book cover. "I Cheerfully Refuse" is the title of a book that plays a recurring role in the story. Also, it may refer to the main character's (Rainy) refusal to be crushed by his circumstances.

When the novel opens, 43 year old Rainy is living with his wife (Lark), whom he adores. It is about forty years into the future. Their society has become dystopian. Lawlessness is rampant. Resources and wealth are controlled by fifteen families who form an oligarchy. Literacy is frowned upon. More and more, citizens are choosing to kill themselves with a drug called Willow. Despite all of this, Rainy and his wife have created a happy life for themselves. He is a painter whose hobby is playing the electric bass guitar in a band. She owns a bookstore that gives her purpose and joy.

Rainy's situation changes radically, one-fourth into the story. He soon finds himself running away from people who intend to hurt him. His wife had earlier taught Rainy how to sail. Rainy uses their boat to escape and travels the waves and fearsome storms of Lake Superior. Lake Superior becomes the setting for this tale.

Here are some of my reactions. The author writes beautifully. This is a thoughtful book. I found it to be too slow-paced and meandering. Rainy is very likeable - a big bear of a man with a kind soul. I enjoyed the special place that his music has in the story (and loved the relationship Rainey has with his wife). However, I have difficulty with dystopias, which affected my over-all enjoyment of the novel.

3.8 stars

“If you're heading out to sea to find the spirit of your beloved, then go while something rare and infinitely lucky is hanging in the sky.”

I read more than half and just couldn't get interested. I loved Peace Like a River and liked Virgil Wander. This has some wonderful passages, but I feel like I'm just going from scene to scene (through stormy seas) and have lost interest in any destination. Lots of people liked it - read their reviews. 😊

Story is not for me. Hoped it would be better, DNF.

Leif Enger is just the best. How on earth I’ve become lucky enough to read his newest this early, I will never know. While I usually reserve a review for close to pub day, I’ m doing this here now in case this story interests you, but you’ve never read him before. You’ve got time.

Peace Like a River is a modern classic, and Virgil Wander is a vibing stunner. If you love those, you’ll want to read his newest. I must say, though, don’t come here with intent on giving a star rating. That’s not what you come here for.

There were a hundred gorgeous pages that lead up to an unexpected, wandering “Quixotian” novel I may not have read without the set up we are given. Though… Being set up for one thrilling novel and getting another? Something much more lost and wandering and less assured in its beauty than it initially started out being? How much like real life is that? And how fitting for such a novel.

Enger’s newest bursts with beautiful sentences and full-fleshed characters in a story that left me wanting in a way I won’t critique but will understand that, rather, I was incorporated into the experience of Rainy, a man who felt the same a thousand times over. Gorgeous novel, though in a way I did not expect.

Some of my favorite quotes from the ARC (remember, not final, so unofficial, but still officially beautiful language.)

“I am always last to see the beauty I inhabit. “

“Why do this to yourself you say, and I reply Why not? As enemies go, despair has every ounce of my respect.”

“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.”

“I banged and barged through dozens and hundreds of books discovered in my eavesdropping sessions, not just adventures but also poetry, sweet Jesus, by Greeks and Brits and Japanese whose silky names I never can remember. Did I understand it? Not by half, but when it thunders you know you chest is shaking.”

I loved Enger's Peace Like a River, and his writing is just as brilliant in this dystopian novel set in the near future. It was strange and unpredictable, which makes sense considering the overall themes, but it was the characters (Rainy, Lark, and Sol) that truly shined. There were many downers in this book and at times, the plot seemed to meander like Rainy's boat when it was carried away by the current, but Enger portrayed the generosity and goodness of the human spirit with such subtle tenderness that I saw the beauty underlying the darkness and loss.

Beneath the dust jacket you will find a cover of Prussian blue; cotton pages, and a story to make your heart ache for the good we take for granted: canned ravioli, tomatoes and bread, books, and a neighborhood.

Even a Church you can bear.

This book has really great things about it.
It's unique, tender, has a compelling nature, and written with thought and melancholy.
And I'm from Duluth.
There were moments I wasn't tracking. Not about to blame the author if it's a tad over my head in areas.
Ps the cover is gorgeous too.
Well done.

I quit after reading half of the novel.
I never connected with the writing and characters, their behaviour and relationships were a bit strange for lack of a better word.
I wish I had quit earlier, but since I loved Enger's Virgil Wonder, I expected I'd also love this one.

This was recently named one of Amazon's `best books of 2024. It involves billionaires behaving badly and a search for a departed wife. Just ordered my copy today.

Enger’s Peace Like a River is among my favorite books, so I was excited by this one. But it felt incoherent and incomplete. Though it has some beautiful phrases and moments, it was entirely unsatisfying.

Another beautiful book by Leif Enger. Haunting.