By Kavita Mistry 
It is masterfully written, eloquent and will resonate with the reader for a long, long time! Love and loss and grief and searching and a dystopian landscape filled with wonderful souls and horribly cruel people and so much more. I am not going to share details, this is a work you need to consume with an open mind and enjoy the experience.
One of many quotes I found worthy of being embedded in my memory: “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.”
Who needs to read this book, well-everyone, but especially those who love literary fiction!
This book confused me. It’s mostly doom and gloom in the near future. But it felt like Enger was trying to make a point; I just could not tell what the point was. At the same time, though, I was enjoying the way he writes, his sly humor and his remarks that were so like those in his books I loved.
I CHEERFULLY REFUSE starts out in Minnesota and ends up in Canada by way of Lake Superior. The main character, Rainy, meets bad guys all along the way but meets good guys in Canada.
Is that a message? If so, Enger would be insulting most of his readers, and I doubt he would do that. I’m just searching for a point.
Another possible point could be his “astronauts.” These were the bad guys who made life hell for everyone else because they had most of the money and, therefore, all of the power. Nowadays I hear lots of complaints about the dangerous oligarchy we live in. Could that be what this is, a complaint about oligarchy?
Whatever the point is with I CHEERFULLY REFUSE, I did enjoy Enger’s sentences, i.e., I love the way he writes. He’s working on another book, and I know I’ll want to read it.