I Cheerfully Refuse

I Cheerfully Refuse

Leif Enger

Published by Grove Press in 2024

336pp / $28.00 / 978-0802162939

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As dark as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) is, it’s a novel that offers a powerful answer to a profound question: if mankind were to destroy itself and this world, is there anything that would, that could endure? McCarthy’s story turns off almost all the lights we crave–natural beauty, human kindness, cooperative community–leaving us only a fragile, candle-flame of love between father and son where, during some of the darkest points of their journey across a burned-out America we get an exchange like this:

What is it, Papa?

Nothing. We’re okay. Go to sleep. 

We’re going to be okay, aren’t we Papa?

Yes. Yes we are. 

And nothing bad is going to happen to us.

That’s right. 

Because we’re carrying the fire.

Yes. Because we’re carrying the fire. 

The fire becomes the symbol of the one thing that cannot be destroyed: the bright, indomitable, God-created love at the center of our existence. 

In a brief but achingly-poignant conclusion the boy, now fatherless and alone at the end of the world, meets a passing family. Fearful, he asks the father of this family if he is “one of the good guys” and then, needing certainty, begs, “Are you carrying the fire?”

They are. Thank goodness they are. For without that flicker of light no amount of Pulitzer-level artistry would have justified McCarthy’s leaving him–and us–to bear the weight of such darkness.  

Recently published, I Cheerfully Refuse will remind readers of The Road because at moments it’s almost as dark. Overall, however, Enger offers more reason for hope and, even, for joy than McCarthy’s masterpiece does. What’s more, because of the gritty message of hope it offers, it’s a novel we need in this time of catastrophic climate change and political selfishness and indifference. 

The story is set in a coastal city of northern Minnesota in the near future: early on Rainy, the narrator, refers to a rundown hybrid; all of the cars he sees are dilapidated versions of the ones that glisten on our roadways today. Ominously, ordinary Americans work at jobs requiring “six-year terms for bread and a bunk under the Employers Are Heroes Act” (8).  The setting has the feel of Orwell’s 1984 in that everything’s a little broken, a little off, faintly reminiscent of something good we once took for granted. The only news comes through a sporadically published rag called The Mosquito, so poorly written that it clearly “doesn’t proofread its own masthead” (22). The wealth in the country resides on the coasts, where the “astronauts” live (the very rich–think, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk). Citizens openly carry guns and are suspicious of each other. Kindness among strangers is rare. It may come as no surprise to readers today that to rule over this version of America, “the country had recently elected its first proudly illiterate president, A MAN UNSPOILT as he constantly bellowed” (30). Enger’s prophetic imagination has a chilling familiarity.  

Especially in his references to the church. When describing a birthday party Rainy has organized for his wife, Lark, he reflects, “it began to resemble what I once thought church might be like, a church you could bear, where people laughed and enjoyed each other and did not care if they were right all the time or if other people were wrong” (74). Later in the novel, in a passage Rainy reads from an essay by a mysterious writer known as Molly Thorn, we hear, “She said the church was a broken compass. That our job always and forever was to refuse Apocalypse in all its forms and work cheerfully against it,” which is where Enger’s novel gets its title and its hopeful focus (237).   

Nevertheless, the times are so bleak that many inhabitants rely on a costly drug called “Willow” that tempts users of all ages in “search of something better.” It’s a popular suicide drug, and so the daily news is full of tragic, euphemized stories like the “Five who concluded in a Michigan backwater” or a “housing block in Chicago” where “nineteen of all ages went in search of something better. They turned on the radio, rented a bouncy castle for the kids” (73). Such a societal bent toward suicide fuels both the criminal production and sale of Willow as well as Enger’s engaging plot.  

Although widespread despair is a given, Enger reminds readers of what’s still to cherish. His main characters, Rainy and his wife Lark, have carved out a wonderful life for themselves in a tight community where books, music, neighborhood parties, and the rare bottle of wine or whiskey are reasons for joy. Lark, the wise, whimsical, emotional center of the story, manages a used bookstore stocked from the sale of once-proud estate libraries along the lake. Rainy supports her by playing in a local bar band, and his bluesy bass is a balm for all. In spite of despair, they’ve managed to carve out a simple, quiet life and community. As Rainy reflects, “We understood the margins where we lived. Some still enjoyed the far-flung coasts for their gleam and influence, but I think we all accepted the grace of the overlooked” (75). 

Unfortunately, they aren’t overlooked for long. Kellan, a young stranger, comes to town, having escaped the awful “six-year term jobs.” In close pursuit is the story’s villain, a ruthless Willow dealer named, sinisterly, Werryck. Rainy and Lark take in Kellan, a tragedy ensues because of Kellan’s connection to Willow, which prompts Rainy to take his old sailboat across a cold, stormy Lake Superior in search of what’s been lost. Werryck pursues Rainy now because of his connection to Kellan and the willow he unknowingly possesses. Along his journey, Rainy shows us the desolate cities along Lake Superior, where he meets many a hardened survivor as well as an occasional kind soul. Most significantly, he meets a young girl named Sol, who, though street-smart and savvy, is abused by her caretaker. Rainy makes a deal that allows him to free Sol from her captivity. Her lively presence on the sailboat will remind readers of other precocious, lovable daughters–Scout Finch, Phoebe Caulfield, or maybe Swede Land, from Enger’s best-selling Peace Like a River. 

Echoes of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice abound throughout: as he seeks the enigmatic Slate Islands, Rainy’s bass guitar, like Orpheus’s lyre, softens the most hardened listener. Enger creates several memorable characters along the way–some evil, but others who exhibit the kind of steely, cheerful refusal to despair that Enger wants to instill in readers. He illustrates several ugly, believable consequences of climate change that we don’t hear about much. For example, one fish Sol manages to catch is mostly disfigured and diseased, “with large scales like guitar picks and bulbous asymmetrical deformations on its sides. It had no fight in it” (237-8). 

Bleak as the novel can be in places, Enger keeps hope alive throughout, reminding me of something Nick Cave said in a Stephen Colbert interview. Cave,  a rocker from Australia, lost two sons in separate tragic incidents. What he says about hope, however, must not be lost: “Hopefulness is not a neutral position; it is adversarial; it is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism.” 

That same adversarial hope permeates Enger’s fine novel, for which readers craving more than a candle flame of hope in 2024 can be grateful.