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Leif Enger, the award-winning author of "Peace Like a River," returns with a strange, alluring novel, "I Cheerfully Refuse" (Grove Press), set in a world burning up and going mad.
Read an excerpt below.
"I Cheerfully Refuse" by Leif Enger
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Back inside Lark picked up the paper bag she'd carried in earlier, holding it close to her chest as though what it contained were embarrassingly lavish. Clearly drawing out the pleasure of reveal she said, "We have a boarder coming tonight. We'll have to get the room ready."
Our third-floor attic was occasionally available for rent, a simple space with just a bed and a half bath tucked into a gable. Despite the high number of travelers passing through, the attic often remained empty. We were cautious about who we allowed to stay there, but also open to the mysterious and curious, like Lark used to say in hushed tones in the darkness of night.
One day, Lark came in beaming, holding a book she had received from a new boarder. With excitement in her eyes, she slowly revealed the worn and weathered advance copy with a blue cardstock cover that read I Cheerfully Refuse.
I was taken aback. "Is this for real?"
Lark chuckled, a sign of her pure joy that always seemed to lift her off the ground. I Cheerfully Refuse was a prized possession for my wife, a bookseller, as it was the unpublished final work of Molly Thorn, a poet, farmer, and rumored recluse from the mid-twentieth century. Molly Thorn had led a fascinating life, dabbling in various forms of writing and gaining a cult following along the way.
"The new boarder, Kellan, brought this galley copy with him," Lark explained. "What are the odds?"
"How long have you looked for that book?"
"Since I was twelve." By then Lark had read everything else of Molly Thorn's thanks to her mother, a profligate reader and purveyor of impertinent ideas.
"Have you already finished it?"
"Haven't started even." She was up on her toes again. "Rainy?"
"Yes?"
"You want to read it first?"
I hesitated. I wasn't sure I wanted to read it at all.
"I know, me too," she said. "I'm almost afraid to open it."
We went to the attic and put sheets on the bed and two heavy quilts against the draft. Swept the room though it was neat. While we worked Lark told me Kellan was young and scrawny, with concave limbs and a red rooster comb for hair. She said, "You're going to notice his hand."
"His hand."
She described a mottled claw burnt to ruin. Glossy and immobile, it got your attention.
"This Kellan, is he a squelette?"
The term, French for skeleton, was popularized a decade earlier when a dozen Michigan laborers seemed to vanish. It happened at a factory like many others, manufacturing drone rotors and home-security mines on the west Huron shore—night shift, dirty weather, they stepped out for a smoke and never came back.
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"I Cheerfully Refuse" by Leif Enger
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For more info:
- "I Cheerfully Refuse" by Leif Enger (Grove Press), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats
- leifenger.com
