I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger

Warning: Spoilers Ahead!

I finished I Cheerfully Refuse yesterday. I fully expected to love it because Leif Enger is a favorite of mine. I did enjoy it, but it is causing more mixed feelings than anticipated. I think it’s because one of the loveliest characters…SPOILER…dies. It’s so sad. When it happened, I was tempted to stop reading. Why am I so shallow? Life isn’t a fairy tale. Stories don’t always end happily. What’s the matter with me?

But I persevered. Reviews have compared I Cheerfully Refuse to the Odyssey. It does involve a long journey in a ship, so I see that. I would need to look again at what happens in the Odyssey to judge whether the comparison goes more deeply than that. Following Rainy on the journey is engaging. I wished the part where he was captured and imprisoned were shorter because prison stories stress me out, but even that part held my interest and included characters I loved.

As I knew it would be, the writing is amazing, lyrical, heartrending, and incredible. One reviewer said she had read it twice already just to read the sentences again. Here are a few.

[The story takes place near and on Lake Superior. The main character and narrator is called Rainy.] My name is Rainier, after the western mountain, but most people shortened it to the dominant local weather.

[Rainy and his wife Lark conversing in bed at three in the morning, with a boarder upstairs.] We whispered back and forth. There’s a pleasant whirr you get when your favorite person wants to stay awake with you but can’t.

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

[Driving in a car, a Ranchero, in need of repair.] To say the Ranchero knocked is polite. It pummeled. It dragged a nightstick across the bars.

[After the funeral service.] Then I got home and could not bear the house…The person’s presence remains default. The loss is less remembered than received fresh each time.

[First sight of Sol, a 9-year-old girl who became a central character.] In the dappled shadows of that dock a tiny wild heron of a girl stalked fish in knee-deep water. She was as brown as berries and carried a long-handled trident like an ocean deity.

[During the imprisonment, when Marcel, a minor but beloved character, walks away.] I don’t want to make too much of this, but it felt bad to loe sight of him…Didier was next to me stirring a five-gallon pail of gray pimer. He said, “Look at us, man. Marcel walks through and we all wish we had a daughter to throw his way.”

[Rainy plays the bass. He met a woman imprisoned in a room below his.] I told Maggie I hoped the noise had not disturbed her.
She gave a wheezy chuckle. “Disturb, no. I like to hear it. If I stand up and put my hands against the pipes, the sound comes into my fingers.”
I found myself unable to speak.

There is a chapter called “the day I remembered the future.”

Those sentences, right? Those words. The surprises. I feel them in my body.

Do you know my concern about my sadness at the start of this entry? You can perhaps tell by the chapter's name near the end, “the day I remembered the future,” that the book ends with hope. There are images of the characters' lives in the future—hopeful, good lives. Rainy doesn’t lose his sadness over the loss of his life's love, but he says, “I am always last to see the beauty I inhabit.” He doesn’t lose sight of the beauty of life.

When I first started reading reviews, I used to pooh-pooh the reviewers who talked only about the beautiful writing. I thought, “I would not read a whole book just because the writing is good.” I still feel that wonderful writing would not compel me to read a whole book if that was all there was. But that is not all there is in Leif Enger’s writing. The writing illuminates the story.

To be honest, I often skim descriptions, even beautiful ones. For example, I very much like the book Snow Falling on Cedars. I’ve read it at least twice, and the movie based on it is good, too. The author, David Guterson, writes beautifully. The book contains many descriptions that generate gorgeous pictures in my mind. Especially the second time I read it, I thought, “I’m going to read every word of the descriptions.” But I couldn’t stick to that resolution. Like every other time, I became so caught up in the story and finding out what would happen next that I was too impatient to read the descriptions closely.

But Leif Enger is different. Somehow, even when he is describing something, it is part of the story. I don’t get impatient. Look at the description of his first sight of Sol above. “…the dappled shadows of that dock a tiny wild heron of a girl…” Oh, my goodness. “A tiny heron of a girl.” So perfect.

I’ve read all of Leif Enger’s books. I think the last book I read was Virgil Wander. I remember when I finished that one, I thought I might turn around and start it again; I liked it so much. I didn’t like I Cheerfully Refuse as much as that, but I did like it. And writing that list of sentences makes me want to read it again.

Read it. Read all of Leif Enger’s books.