I Cheerfully Refuse
Leif Enger
(Author)
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Description
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.
Product Details
| Publisher | Grove Press |
| Publish Date | April 02, 2024 |
| Pages | 336 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Hardback |
| EAN/UPC | 9780802162939 |
| Dimensions | 9.1 X 6.2 X 1.2 inches | 1.1 pounds |
About the Author
Leif Enger is the author of the bestselling novels Peace Like a River, So Brave, Young, and Handsome, and Virgil Wander. His books have won the Booksense Award for Fiction, the High Plains Book Award for Fiction, and been longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, among other honors. He lives with his wife in Duluth, MN.
Reviews
Praise for I Cheerfully Refuse
A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year
A Michigan Notable Book
Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
A National Endowment for the Arts Big Read Selection
An Amazon Top 20 Book of Year (#9)
2024 INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalist
Barnes & Noble's April Book Club Pick
An April Indie Next Pick
A Most Anticipated Book of 2024 from Literary Hub
"My favorite novel of the year . . . At once an old-fashioned yarn and an adventure on the high seas, I Cheerfully Refuse is a love letter to readers and optimists, a tale that dares to be unexpected, its ending uncertain until the very moment of its arrival. Told in spare, beautiful prose, it's heartbreaking, frighteningly prophetic and defiantly hopeful. Exactly the novel I needed in 2024." -Kristin Hannah in the Wall Street Journal
"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,
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