REVIEW: I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger

 

Synopsis

Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of Rainy, an aspiring musician setting sail on Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. An endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, he seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. After encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, he eventually lands to find an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, a crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society. As his 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 wake.

Format 336 pages, Hardcover

Published April 2, 2024 by Grove Press

ISBN 9780802162939 (ISBN10: 0802162932)

Genre Literary Fiction

About the Author https://groveatlantic.com/author/leif-enger/

My Thoughts

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.

You might see their helos whacking past on long weekends. Sometimes they fly low on the ground. I used to wave but they never waved back.

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.

The world was so old and exhausted that many now saw it as a dying great-grand on a surgical table, body decaying from use and neglect, mind fading down to a glow.

Rainy (short for Rainier) is a big, gentle bear of a man who is totally devoted to his wife and their life together. As Lark said of him...

"You're a man who stops and listens. If that's not the definition of friendship, it's close enough for now."

There's such a sweetness and gentleness between Rainy and Lark. This is a romance for the ages against a dark landscape.

I felt my lungs relax. I liked Labrino, wanted him to be all right. But I also really wanted him to go home, and be all right at home.

Lark said, "Sometimes your friends choose you."

She took my hand. Her eyes flared wide then got stealthy, and at the bridge of her nose appeared two upward indents like dashes made by a pencil. It was irresistible, my favorite expression-- of all her looks it built the most suspense, and it was just for me.

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.

Did I understand it? Not by half, but when it thunders you know your chest is shaking. These thieves and lovers and wandering poets-- what big lives they had! I began watching everyone I met for secret greatness.

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 at that moment in their life. And once he sees her, then he's all done for...

Chancing a single casual glance at her green eyes, I got an impression of curiosity and wit and maybe a little mockery zipping around back there like fireflies.

His love for her grows through the years, as does their respect and care of one another.

I liked her rogue bookshop, her smoky voice. Her birthmark like war paint.

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.

I opened my mouth, then remembered a few things about my friend. He had a grown son living in a tent on top of a landfill in Seattle. A daughter he'd not heard from in two years. His wife had enough of him long ago, and he was blind in one eye from when he tried to help a man crouched by the road and got beaten unconscious for his trouble. That Labrino was even operative-- that he ran a decent tavern and hired live music and employed two bartenders and a cook who made good soup-- testified to his grit.

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."

"In subsequent days he'll win renown, but he won't really like it." I smiled in the dark-- Lark had a habit, when very tired, of predicting upshots in the lives of people just met. She never let them hear these yet-to-comes, these subsequents, which were purely for herself and sometimes me.

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.

I began to feel quite sentimental toward Flower. What a stout small craft she was. I was not much of a sailor nor navigator yet she'd protected me in all conditions.

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 running 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), as well as references to beekeeping and gardening, the weather, and more.

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.

Vocabulary (I love when a book exposes me to glorious new words!)

frousting: stale, stuffy atmosphere

manky: inferior, worthless, dirty or unpleasant

propitiation: atonement, or appeasing a god or spirit

munificient: larger or more generous than is usual or necessary

verdigris: a patina formed on copper or brass

fusty: stale, damp, or old-fashioned in attitude

Buy Now:

See the publisher's website Grove Atlantic for purchase options.

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.

Warnings:

Brief violence, unsettling situations

Cover: A

Writing Style: A

Characters:  A

Storyline/Plot: A

Interest/Uniqueness: A+

My Rating:

---

The Cerebral Girl is a middle-aged blogger just digging her way out from under a mountain of books in the deep south of Florida.

I read this as part of the April 2024 selection for the Barnes & Noble Book Club.

Introducing...Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth

 Introducing books through the first paragraph or so...

THE OFFICE OF DR. WARREN, PSYCHIATRIST

Dr. Warren sits in a gray folding chair, one ankle resting on the opposite knee. He wears a brown suit, a red tie, and thin-rimmed glasses, and his bald, liver-spotted head is as waxed and shiny as a freshly buffed sports car. When I knock on the door, he points to the vacant chair facing him, his gaze fixed on an old-school manilla folder in his lap.

"Hello," I say tentatively.

No response. After a brief hesitation, I squeak across the floors in my sneakers and sit.

Dr. Warren remains bent over his file.

-- Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth

What's Releasing (5/8/24 edition)

 

What's releasing the week of 5/13/24:

Think Twice by Harlan Coben

How can a man who’s already dead be wanted for murder?

 

Three years ago, sports agent Myron Bolitar gave a eulogy at the funeral of his client, renowned basketball coach Greg Downing. Myron and Greg had history: initially as deeply personal rivals, and later as unexpected business associates. Myron made peace and moved on – until now, when twofederal agents walked into his office, demanding to know where Greg Downing is.

According to the agents, Greg is still alive—and has been placed at the scene of a double homicide, making him their main suspect. Shocked, Myron needs answers.

Myron and Win, longtime friends and colleagues, set out to find the truth, but the more they discover about Greg, the more dangerous their world becomes. Secrets, lies, and a murderous conspiracy that stretches back into the past churn at the heart of Harlan Coben's blistering new novel.

Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna

An electric, searing memoir by the original rebel girl and legendary front woman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre.

Hey girlfriend I got a proposition, goes something like this: Dare ya to do what you want.

Kathleen Hanna's rallying cry to feminists echoed far and wide through the punk scene of the 90s and beyond. Her band, Bikini Kill, embodies this iconic time, and today her personal yet feminist lyrics on anthems like "Rebel Girl" and "Double Dare Ya" are more powerful than ever. But where did this transformative voice come from?

In Rebel Girl, Hanna's raw and insightful new memoir, she takes us from her tumultuous childhood home to her formative college years in Olympia, Washington, and on to her first years on tour, fighting hard for gigs and for her band. As Hanna makes clear, being in a "girl band," especially a punk girl band, in those years was not a simple or safe prospect. Male violence and antagonism threatened at every turn, and surviving as a singer who was a lightning rod for controversy took limitless amounts of determination.

But the relationships she developed during those years buoyed her—including with her bandmates, Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox, and Johanna Fateman; her friendships with Kurt Cobain and Ian MacKaye; and her introduction to Joan Jett— were all a testament to how the punk world could nurture and care for its own. Hanna opens up about falling in love with Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys and her debilitating battle with Lyme disease, and she brings us behind the scenes of her musical growth in her bands, Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin. She also writes candidly about the Riot Grrrl movement, documenting with love its grassroots origins but critiquing its later exclusivity.

In an uncut voice all her own, Hanna reveals the hardest times along with the most joyful—and how it continues to fuel her revolutionary art and music.

I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Unicorn comes a new novel with equal amounts of power and whimsy in which a loveable cast of characters trapped within their roles of dragon hunter, princess, and more must come together to take their fates into their own hands.

Dragons are common in the backwater kingdom of Bellemontagne, coming in sizes from mouse-like vermin all the way up to castle-smashing monsters. Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus Thrax (who would much rather people call him Robert) has recently inherited his deceased dad’s job as a dragon catcher/exterminator, a career he detests with all his heart in part because he likes dragons, feeling a kinship with them, but mainly because his dream has always been the impossible one of transcending his humble origin to someday become a prince’s valet. Needless to say, fate has something rather different in mind...

The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren

Christina Lauren, the instant New York Times bestselling and “reigning romance queens” (PopSugar), returns with a delicious new romance between the buttoned-up heir of a grocery chain and his free-spirited artist ex as they fake their relationship in order to receive a massive inheritance.

Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam “West” Weston for access to subsidized family housing while at UCLA. She also thought she’d signed divorce papers when the graduation caps were tossed, and they both went on their merry ways.

Three years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor. He may be one of four heirs to the Weston Foods conglomerate, but he has little interest in working for the heartless corporation his family built from the ground up. He is interested, however, in his one-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. There’s just one catch.

Due to an antiquated clause in his grandfather’s will, Liam won’t see a penny until he’s been happily married for five years. Just when Liam thinks he’s in the home stretch, pressure mounts from his family to see this mysterious spouse, and he has no choice but to turn to the one person he’s afraid to introduce to his one-percenter parents—his unpolished, not-so-ex-wife.

But in the presence of his family, Liam’s fears quickly shift from whether the feisty, foul-mouthed, paint-splattered Anna can play the part to whether the toxic world of wealth will corrupt someone as pure of heart as his surprisingly grounded and loyal wife. Liam will have to ask himself if the price tag on his flimsy cover story is worth losing true love that sprouted from a lie.

Locked in Pursuit by Ashley Weaver

The fourth instalment in Ashley Weaver's delightful series, Locked in Pursuit follows safecracker Electra McDonnell fighting Nazis at every turn as World War II looms over London.

Safecracker Ellie McDonnell hasn’t seen Major Ramsey—her handsome but aloof handler in the British government—since their tumultuous mission together three months before, but when she hears about a suspicious robbery in London she feels compelled to contact him. Together they discover that a rash of burglaries leads back to a hotbed of spies in the neutral city Lisbon, Portugal, and an unknown object brought to London by a mysterious courier.

As the thieves become more desperate and their crimes escalate, it becomes imperative that Ellie and Ramsey must beat them at their own game. Fighting shadowy assailants, enemy agents, and the mutual attraction they’ve agreed not to acknowledge, Ellie and Ramsey work together to learn if it truly takes a thief to catch a thief.

Rednecks by Taylor Brown

A historical drama based on the Battle of Blair Mountain, pitting a multi-ethnic army of 10,000 coal miners against mine owners, state militia, and the United States government in the largest labor uprising in American history.

Rednecks is a tour de force, big canvas historical novel that dramatizes the 1920 to 1921 events of the West Virginia Mine Wars—from the Matewan Massacre through the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed conflict on American soil since the Civil War, when some one million rounds were fired, bombs were dropped on Appalachia, and the term “redneck” would come to have an unexpected origin story.

Brimming with the high stakes drama of America’s buried history, Rednecks tells a powerful story of rebellion against oppression. In a land where the coal companies use violence and intimidation to keep miners from organizing, “Doc Moo" Muhanna, a Lebanese-American doctor (inspired by the author’s own great-grandfather), toils amid the blood and injustice of the mining camps. When Frank Hugham, a Black World War One veteran and coal miner, takes dramatic steps to lead a miners' revolt with a band of fellow veterans, Doc Moo risks his life and career to treat sick and wounded miners, while Frank's grandmother, Beulah, fights her own battle to save her home and grandson. Real-life historical figures burn bright among the hills: the fiery Mother Jones, an Irish-born labor organizer once known as "The Most Dangerous Woman in America," struggles to maintain the ear of the miners ("her boys") amid the tide of rebellion, while the sharp-shooting police chief "Smilin" Sid Hatfield dares to stand up to the "gun thugs" of the coal companies, becoming a folk hero of the mine wars.

Award-winning novelist Taylor Brown brings to life one of the most compelling events in 20th century American history, reminding us of the hard-won origins of today's unions. Rednecks is a propulsive, character-driven tale that’s both a century old and blisteringly contemporary: a story of unexpected friendship, heroism in the face of injustice, and the power of love and community against all odds.

Very Bad Company by Emma Rosenblum

A gripping, darkly comic novel from the national bestselling author of Bad Summer People about a team of wealthy and powerful executives on retreat in Miami when one of them goes missing . . .

Every year, executives at the trendy tech startup Aurora gather the company’s top employees for an exclusive retreat in Miami, and this year Caitlin Levy—Aurora’s newest hire—is joining the team as head of events. The benefits are outstanding: a seven-figure salary, stock shares, a discretionary bonus, limitless vacation days—what could possibly go wrong?

When a fellow high-level executive vanishes after the first night, the disappearance has the potential to derail the future of the company’s sale and cost everyone on the team millions. Now more than ever, Caitlin and her colleagues must continue the charade—partaking in team-building exercises, group brainstorms, dinners—in order to keep the future of Aurora afloat amid all the fatal speculations.

Compulsively readable, Very Bad Company is a slick send-up of corporate culture wrapped in a captivating mystery.

The Hunter's Daughter by Nicola Solvinic

A hypnotic, sinister debut mystery about a seemingly good cop who is secretly the daughter of a notorious serial killer.

Anna Koray escaped her father’s darkness long ago. When she was a girl, her childhood memories were sealed away from her conscious mind by a controversial hypnosis treatment. She’s now a decorated sheriff’s lieutenant serving a rural county, conducting an ordinary life far from her father’s shadow.

When Anna kills a man in the line of duty, her suppressed memories return. She dreams of her beloved father, his hands red with blood, surrounded by flower-decked corpses he had sacrificed to the god of the forest.

To Anna’s horror, a serial killer emerges who is copying her father – and who knows who she really is. Is her father still alive, or is this the work of another? Will the killer expose her, destroying everything she has built for herself? Does she want him to?

But as she haunts the forest, using her father’s tricks to the hunt the killer, will she find what she needs most…or lose herself in the gathering darkness?

See the full list

ARTICLE SHARING: Open Book Interview with Abir Mukherjee

 

Hatchette has an Open Book interview with Abir Mukherjee. Read it here.

Monday Book Love (5/6/24 edition)

 

Monday Book Love is a catch-all for all of those events where you share your latest acquisitions, events like:

Mailbox Monday

What are You Reading?

Stacking the Shelves

Received through Amazon First Reads:

The Promise of Tomorrow by Mary Ellen Taylor

When Olympia leaves her small Virginia town, she doesn’t expect to look back, much less ever come home. But after a year on the road, her sister’s engagement pulls Olympia into everything she left behind: her family, her husband, and the grief she’s been trying to forget.

She’s determined to stay a few days, maybe a week―just enough time to visit gravestones and sign off on the divorce her husband, Spencer, asked for. But he’s reeling from their shared loss, as well as complications with his aging parents, leaving his heart just as fragile as Olympia’s. The more time they spend in each other’s orbit, the less sure they are they’ll be able to walk away for good.

As family secrets come to light and family bonds stretch to the breaking point, Olympia must decide where she’s going next and where she belongs. She’s used to coping with life’s complications alone, but maybe the best way to heal is together.

Received through Book Browse:

The Pecan Children by Quinn Connor

For fans of The Midnight Library and Swamplandia! comes a breathtaking story of magical realism about two sisters, deeply tied to their small Southern town, fighting to break free of the darkness swallowing the land―and its endless cycle of pecan harvests―whole. In the struggling town of Clearwater, Arkansas, the annual pecan harvest is a time of both celebration and heartbreak. But even as families are forced to sell their orchards and move away, Lil Clearwater refuses to let go of the land her family has been rooted to for generations. She feels a connection to the earth that goes deeper than memory―which is why she reluctantly accepts her sister Sasha's return to the fold after so long away. It should be a time of joyful reconnection, yet it isn't long before things take a dark turn. There is rot hiding beneath the surface, and hungry eyes that watch from the dark. As phantom fires begin to light up the night and troubling local folklore is revealed to be all too true, the sisters―confronted with the ghosts of their pasts―come to the stark realization that in the kudzu-choked South, nothing is ever as it seems.

Received free from ThriftBooks for World Book Day:

Her Name is Knight by Yasmin Angoe

A smash debut novel from rising star Yasmin Angoe, Her Name Is Knight features an elite assassin heroine on a mission to topple a human trafficking ring and avenge her family.

Stolen from her Ghanaian village as a child, Nena Knight has plenty of motives to kill. Now an elite assassin for a powerful business syndicate called the Tribe, she gets plenty of chances.

But while on assignment in Miami, Nena ends up saving a life, not taking one. She emerges from the experience a changed woman, finally hopeful for a life beyond rage and revenge. Tasked with killing a man she’s come to respect, Nena struggles to reconcile her loyalty to the Tribe with her new purpose.

Meanwhile, she learns a new Tribe council member is the same man who razed her village, murdered her family, and sold her into captivity. Nena can’t resist the temptation of vengeance—and she doesn’t want to. Before she can reclaim her life, she must leverage everything she was and everything she is to take him down and end the cycle of bloodshed for good.

Purchased:

Open Wide: A Cookbook for Friends by benny blanco

The debut cookbook from benny blanco—pop music super-producer, artist, actor on FXX’s Dave, and consummate food freak—teaches you everything you need to know about cooking, enjoying life, and throwing the greatest dinner party of all time.

Hi, I’m benny blanco. I’m in a television show with my best friend Dave and I probably produced most of the songs you have heard on the radio from 2008 until now. When I was thirteen, my friend got a George Foreman Grill and it changed my life forever. We would invite friends over, get stoned, and make the most elaborate sandwiches our prepubescent minds could fathom. I became obsessed with food and cooking for friends. 

I know what you are going to say, and I get it. Cooking is scary. But I promise you, once you get into it, it will be your new addiction. Slicing an onion is like taking a Xanax to me. I made this cookbook to teach you everything I know about food, cooking, and throwing the greatest dinner party of all time. There are the basics to get your kitchen ready, a little advice from my expert friends, then all of the dinner party menus I love to make,  

5 Dishes to Get You Laid and One for the Morning After I Wish I Were an Italian Grandma Take Me to the Cheesy Rodeo F*ck Morton’s Steakhouse 

Which are filled with insane recipes  

Lose Your Mind Lobster Rolls “I Might Go Vegetarian” Veggie Sandwich Chicken Cutlets with Honey, Peppers, and Parm “I Hope We Didn’t Make a Baby” Breakfast Burrito. 

I’ve been told some of the finest stories over meals. I’ve laughed so hard I thought I was going to actually die. I’ve fallen in love—sometimes with the food, sometimes with the person across the table. I’ve cried in good ways, and I’ve cried in bad ways. I hope you’ve been lucky enough to have all these same memories and then some. But if you haven’t, I can make you a promise. If you follow these three simple steps, it will all become an Open this book. Open your heart. And open wide, baby.

I also purchased this adorable leather bookmark through Etsy!

She offers various options for her leather bookmark including bats, cats, and aliens. Check out her store LumiyaCreations.