It is sometime in the future, but perhaps not the distant future. Rainey, a bear of man in his 30s, lives with Lark, the woman he adores, in a small town on the Lake Superior coastline. Rainey plays guitar with a local group, while Lark runs a bookstore. They have, if not a comfortable life, a life they enjoy living together. Some people don’t enjoy life at all and have taken something called Willow, billed as a doorway into another life but sounding more like a suicide pill.
Lark makes an occasional trip to nearby places like Duluth whenever she hears of an estate sale or other availability of books. It’s only used books that are now sold; no one’s publishing new ones. Electricity functions off and on. People try to muddle through as best they can; Willow is becoming a more attractive option. Manufacturing, like for security systems and pharmaceuticals, happens on big ships docked in lakes, rivers, and the ocean. People with no other way to make a living can become indentured servants or volunteer to be test subjects.
The coasts, and everything within them, are owned by 16 families, while the interior regions function as best they can. There seems to be some kind of theocracy in the South; parts of the Upper Midwest seems to function under some kind of general, if fraying, agreement. The U.S. dollar still functions; there just doesn’t seem to be much of it around, creating a thriving barter system. To the north, Canada has been affected, too, but seems somewhat better off.
Something has happened to the world in I Cheerfully Refuse, the new novel by Leif Enger, but what that something is isn’t exactly defined. Climate change, perhaps. Societal breakdown, for sure. Rainey and Lark don’t hoard, except for coffee beans. Replacing a mechanical part is often a major exercise in search and bartering.
Leif Enger
A young man named Kellan stumbles into the life of Rainey and Lark. They suspect he’s a squelette, the term for indentured servants who’ve run away. But he offers Lark an old, advanced reading copy of I Cheerfully Refuse, a book by Mollie Thorn, who lived in the middle of the 20th century. For Lark, it’s a treasure, personally more meaningful than any other book. On a sailing trip, years before, Lark and Rainey met Mollie Thorn, or perhaps her ghost, in the Slate Islands off the coast of Canada.
Kellan suddenly disappears, but they don’t think much of it. Rainey is playing a gig in the local pub when he sees officers come inside, and they’re looking for him. He rushes out the back door, arriving home to find his house torn apart, And worse. He flees to the only refuge he knows – their sailboat Flower and the safety of the lake. Trying to understand what happened, he sets sail for the Slates, hoping to find Lark there, much like they found Millie Thorn.
It's an extraordinary story, simultaneously fictional and dystopian yet so close to contemporary reality that it’s eerie. And perhaps a bit frightening,
Enger is the author the three previous novels, including the widely acclaimed Peace Like a River; So Young, Brave and Handsome; and Virgil Wander. A native of Minnesota, all three of his novels have received awards and national recognitions. He lives with his family in Duluth.
I Cheerfully Refuse is a novel about books and the love for them, about the things that bind us together and tear us apart, about the choices we make, and about the love we share and should always cherish. And it’s the story of a man who will brave adversity and danger and still hold on to love.
Related:
Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River.
Leif Enger’s So Brave, Young and Handsome.
Some Monday Readings
“Spring and All,” poem by William Carlos Williams – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.
W.S. Gilbert – Alexander Larman at The Critic Magazine.
The Prophets: Eric Hoffer – Rob Henderson at The Free Press.
Why Does Being Left-Wing Make You Unhappy? – Ian Leslie at The Ruffian.
What options does Israel have? – Douglas Murray at The Spectator.
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