I Cheerfully Refuse to Enjoy This Book (But the Writing Is Great) ⭐⭐⭐
A Meandering Dystopian Journey That Lost Me Along the Way
Quick Stats
Title: I Cheerfully Refuse
Author: Leif Enger
Published: 2024
Genre: Speculative/Dystopian Fiction
My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5 stars)
Page Count: 336 pages
⚠️ Content Warnings / Triggers
Before we dive in, here's what you should know if you're sensitive to certain themes:
Suicide (including a drug specifically designed to assist in dying)
Addiction and substance abuse
Domestic violence and abuse (including child abuse)
Murder and violence
Grief and loss
Climate anxiety and dystopian collapse
The Short Version (For My Fellow Impatient Readers) 📖
Look, I wanted to love this book. I really did. Leif Enger is objectively a talented writer—his prose is beautiful, almost poetic at times. The premise sounded incredible: a dystopian retelling of the Orpheus myth set on Lake Superior, following a grieving musician searching for his murdered wife .
But here's the thing: this book meanders like a lost tourist with no GPS. It's slow. It's meandering. It's the literary equivalent of taking the scenic route when you're already late for dinner.
I didn't connect with any of the characters. Not Rainy, the protagonist. Not Lark, his wife (who dies early on, so we barely know her). Not Kellan, the mysterious boarder. Not even Sol, the young girl he rescues later. They all felt distant, like I was watching them through fogged glass.
Would I have cheerfully refused to read this? Honestly... maybe. 😅
But three stars because the writing genuinely is excellent. Enger can craft a sentence. I just wish those sentences went somewhere faster.
🚨 SPOILER WARNING 🚨
From this point forward, I'm spilling EVERYTHING. The full plot. The ending. All of it. If you want to go into this book blind, scroll down to the book recommendations section at the bottom.
You've been warned.
Full Plot Summary (With Complete Spoilers)
Part One: Life in Icebridge
Rainy (Rainier) is a bass guitarist living in Icebridge, a small town on Lake Superior. His wife, Lark, runs a bookshop called Bread. They rent out their spare room to travelers. The world around them is deteriorating—wealth disparity is extreme, with 16 mega-wealthy families called "astronauts" owning nearly everything. Working-class people try to flee across the lake to Canada to escape labor contracts .
A comet called Tashi's Comet is approaching Earth. Rainy's friend Labrino believes it's a bad omen. Rainy thinks it'll be beautiful.
A boarder arrives: Kellan, a young man bringing a copy of I Cheerfully Refuse, the last unpublished novel by Molly Thorn, Lark's favorite author. Kellan steals car parts at the fair, nearly crushes Rainy accidentally, then uses nitrous oxide and raves about a man named Werryck, warning Rainy to run when he arrives.
Kellan stays a while and helps Rainy fix his boat, Flowers. Rainy remembers a trip he and Lark took to the Slate Islands, where they felt they met Molly Thorn's spirit.
One night, Rainy visits Labrino, who is dying by choice using a new drug called Willow—a drug that eases people into death. Rainy stays with him until he dies.
An old man visits Lark's shop, asking about special books. Lark shows him I Cheerfully Refuse but refuses to sell it. That night, Rainy throws a birthday party for Lark. The old man is there, asking odd questions. Rainy ignores him, looking for Kellan, who is missing. The next day, Kellan's belongings are gone.
A microburst hits the town. A friend's dog goes missing. Lark and Rainy split up to find it. Rainy returns home to find the house wrecked and Lark dead in Kellan's room.
Part Two: The Flight
Police conclude Rainy didn't kill Lark. When he mentions Kellan feared Werryck, the police freeze and leave. Rainy learns the old man is Werryck.
Rainy has a vision that Lark wants to meet him at the Slate Islands. At a gig, he sees Werryck in the crowd and narrowly escapes. He races to the dock and leaves on Flowers.
After a stormy night, a woman shoots at him as he drains the boat. He escapes and docks in Lightner. He buys supplies and runs into the police officer from the fair, who warns him he's wanted for theft. He sails to Thunder Bay, where he sees a missing-person poster for Kellan. He buys a disposable phone and calls the number. Werryck answers, explaining that Kellan stole a lot of Willow before running away from his contract. Werryck wants Rainy's help to get it back. Rainy refuses, throwing the phone in the water.
Rainy docks in Jolie and agrees to play guitar at a charity event in return for boat repairs. The local doctor, Girard, empathizes with Rainy's grief, having lost his daughter. Girard and his wife help Rainy prepare for the final leg of his trip.
When Rainy enters the Slates bay, he sees a cruiser he knows is Werryck's. Fleeing into a storm, he falls overboard but catches a rope and climbs back aboard. The next morning, he finds tabs of Willow in one of Kellan's nitrous canisters in the boat.
Part Three: Sol and the Bridge
On the Michigan coast, a young girl named Sol is fishing with a trident. She takes Rainy to her uncle, King Richard, who trades supplies for Rainy's gun. Back on the water, Rainy finds Sol stowed away because King Richard abuses her. Rainy returns and trades his guitar for her freedom. She tells him her grandfather, Papa Griff, is in Redfield, and Rainy decides to take her there.
They sail down a canal. The island side is desolate (Blinker); the mainland side looks pleasant (Brighton). A gas station attendant tells them the two towns once coexisted peacefully but now despise each other—Brighton thinks Blinker is full of heathens.
Rainy navigates to a bridge and negotiates passage with Alistair, the bridgemaster. Charging an absurd price, he gives them a certificate and tells them they can cross in the morning. The next morning, the on-duty bridgemaster says their certificate has expired.
Rainy and Sol cover Flowers in mud, hoping to sneak by Alistair. A group from Brighton crosses the bridge to raid Blinker and returns with three prisoners, whom they hang. After they leave, Rainy sails under the bridge without Alistair noticing, anchors, and goes to return equipment he borrowed from a Blinker woman. When he returns, Sol has set the bridge on fire. While she recovers from hypothermia, Rainy reads I Cheerfully Refuse to her.
They look for Papa Griff, finally finding him in Port Minera. They head for Jolie, but a storm knocks them off course and they land on Michipicoten Island next to Werryck's cruiser.
Part Four: The Medicine Ship
They are escorted aboard a medicine ship working on pharmaceutical projects. Visiting Rainy's cell deep in the ship, Werryck says Rainy is convicted of aiding a fugitive. Werryck gives Rainy his guitar. At first, Werryck doesn't like Rainy's playing and allows him to work on the paint crew if it helps him focus his music.
Rainy learns from the crew that 12 prisoners escaped the ship. One night, as Rainy plays, Werryck takes him out on deck to see the 12 prisoners, who have been recaptured. One is Kellan.
Rainy meets Kellan at his cell. Kellan explains that he was a test subject for a compliance medicine that made him follow any order—and Werryck told him to put his hand in a fire.
Werryck locks the 12 prisoners in a cage on a raft out on the water overnight in a storm. They survive, and the ship grows restless with hope. They're brought back onto the ship.
Werryck, who summons Rainy early, has a migraine and isn't himself. One of his men interrupts their session, and Werryck and Rainy follow him out. Prisoners and workers have staged a mutiny and are boarding the cruiser to leave. No guards resist them because the mutineers put compliance medicine in their food. Powerless, Werryck ends up in a cell. The mutineers, including Kellan, leave on the ship, while Rainy and Sol leave on Flowers for Jolie. Rainy offers to take Papa Griff with them, but he refuses.
Part Five: The Ending
In Jolie, Sol and Rainy begin a new life, staying with Girard and his wife. Rainy watches Tashi's Comet every morning as it nears Earth. Sol enjoys reading and learning. A member from his paint crew visits, reporting that the medicine ship sank and Werryck died, but all the refugees are safe.
As the comet nears its brightest day, Rainy finally goes to the Slates, where he feels Lark's presence beside him and sees a future in which the people he met on his journey are happy. He leaves the Slates to join them .
The ending is intentionally ambiguous and dreamlike. Rainy doesn't literally reunite with Lark—instead, he finds a kind of peace and a vision of a hopeful future for those he's come to care about.
What Worked (For Me, At Least) ✨
The prose is genuinely beautiful. Enger can write. There's no denying that.
The Lake Superior setting is vividly rendered and atmospheric .
Sol was probably the most interesting character, though she arrives late in the game.
What Didn't Work (For Me) 😴
The pacing is glacial. This book takes its sweet time getting anywhere.
The meandering structure made it hard to stay engaged. Rainy just... sails around and meets people. There's no strong narrative drive.
Character connections were nonexistent for me. I felt like I was observing from a distance rather than experiencing the story.
The ending felt anticlimactic after the long journey. Some readers love the ambiguity; I wanted more resolution .
Final Verdict: Should You Read It?
Read it if:
You love literary fiction with gorgeous prose
You enjoy slow, atmospheric, character-driven stories
You're interested in dystopian settings that feel eerily plausible
You don't mind ambiguous endings
Skip it if:
You need fast pacing and strong plot momentum
You want to connect deeply with characters
You prefer clear resolutions
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5 stars)
The writing deserved more stars. The experience of reading it deserved fewer. I compromised.
📚 If You Want Something Similar (But Better Paced)
If the idea of a dystopian literary journey appeals to you but you want tighter pacing and stronger character connections, here are some alternatives:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy — Bleak, brutal, but propulsive. A father and son journey through post-apocalyptic America.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel — A traveling Shakespeare troupe navigates a post-pandemic world. Beautiful and more tightly structured.
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller — A pilot survives in a collapsed world. Sparse, moving, and surprisingly hopeful.
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood — A speculative dystopia with sharp social commentary and a more conventional narrative drive.
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. — Classic post-apocalyptic fiction about preserving knowledge through dark times. More plot-focused than Enger's novel.
Have you read I Cheerfully Refuse? Did you love it or struggle like I did? Let me know in the comments! 💬📖
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