Publisher's Weekly Review
The well-meaning sad sack who narrates this poignant novel from Enger (Peace Like a River) has just driven his car into icy Lake Superior when the book opens. Suffering from a concussion and possibly hallucinations, Virgil, the middle-aged town clerk and owner of a decrepit money pit of a movie theater, decides to take his emergence from the lake as a sign of rebirth. He's aided in that endeavor by a mysterious, kite-flying Norwegian stranger named Rune, who has just arrived in the decaying former mining town of Greenstone, Minn., with "a hundred merry crinkles at his eyes and a long-haul sadness in his shoulders." Rune is looking for information about a son he has only recently learned of, a gifted Minor League Baseball player who took off in a small plane a few years back and was never seen again, leaving behind a wife, "the tempestuous Nadine," for whom Virgil has silently pined for years. Greenstone is one of those folksy Minnesota towns just a little north of the literary territory of Lake Wobegon, full of characters doing their awkward best, with a touch of evil added by nihilist screenwriter Adam Leer, who has returned to his hometown for nefarious if not entirely defined purposes. Enger's novel gives magical realism a homely Midwestern twist, and should have very broad appeal. Agent: Molly Friedrich, the Friedrich Agency. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Minnesota novelist Enger (So Brave, Young, and Handsome, 2008, etc.) takes readers on a magical mystery tour of a fictional town on the shores of Lake Michigan, near Duluth.One of the subplots of this parable about the rebirth of both the titular narrator and his North Shore hometown concerns a minor-league prospect who had one moment of glory that he was never able to equal. An eccentric young pitcher with a fastball so uncontrollable it had its own nicknamethe "Mad Mouse"he pitched a no-hitter and then disappeared into the ether. It's easy to read that as a metaphor for the author himself, who made a bestselling breakthrough with his debut (Peace Like a River, 2001), wasn't able to sustain a major-league reputation with his follow-up, and has now returned with his first novel in a decadeperhaps his most ambitious. Or at least his most overstuffed. Among its elements is the first-person narrator with the portentous name who has survived a near-death experience, plunging with his car into Lake Superior. And a kite-flying Nordic codger who has come in search of the son he never knew (the disappeared pitcher). And a pet raccoon named Genghis, half-domesticated, half-feral. And a homicidal sturgeon. And the wayward son of the town founder who has become a film director of disrepute and brings ill fortune to others by his very presence. And a mythically beautiful young mother and her son, who are hoping for the return of their Odysseus (again, the disappeared pitcher) but will perhaps find new love with Virgil. And an annual festival called Hard Luck Days to which the story builds and which eventually attracts regional son Bob Dylan (who proclaims the pie he is served "better than the Nobel"). There's also a bomb. Virgil himself provides the best summary: "Why am I still surprised when it turns out there is more to the story?...A person never knows what is nextI don't, anyway. The surface of everything is thinner than we know. A person can fall right through, without any warning at all."Like Garrison Keillor on hallucinogens, this novel has a lot more imagination than coherence. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Virgil Wander, city clerk of Greenstone, a formerly industrious coastal Minnesota town that time forgot, has just survived a crash that sent his Pontiac screaming into snowy Lake Superior. After Virgil's accident, his apartment above the movie theater he owns and operates feels like someone else's home, and everyone he used to know most of whom he remembers wants to be sure he heard the rumor that he, in fact, died. In his convalescence, Virgil meets Rune, a Norwegian ostensibly arrived in Greenstone to teach its residents the joys of kite flying as he gathers information about his son, who just happens to be the town's most famously disappeared resident: a minor-league baseball phenom who took a solo flight in a Taylorcraft 10 years ago and never came back. Virgil's narration is a joy: he lost his adjectives in the crash, making for their gleeful insertion each time he remembers one. Enger (So Brave, Young, and Handsome, 2008) populates down-on-its-luck Greenstone with true characters charming Virgil, his love interest, friends, and not-quite-friends, and even some wily wildlife and gives them diverting plotlines aplenty, but the focus of his bright and breathing third novel feels mostly like life itself, in all its smallness and bigness, and what it means to live a good one.--Annie Bostrom Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
WHAT A WONDROUS MIRACLE, to Wake Up, memory muddled, slightly unmoored, with just the task of relearning yourself, your friends, your hometown nestled along the ruggedly beautiful shores of Lake Superior. Everything that once was rundown and rusted suddenly seems new and exotic, buffed to a striking shine. Such is the plight of Virgil Wander, who gives Leif Enger's new novel its name and is one of the most engaging protagonists I've encountered in years. Wander is an orphan, a fallen seminarian, a movie-theater owner. After his car plunges off a cliff into the icy waters of the lake below, his memory and capacity for language are compromised. The world of fiction has always rewarded the obsession, the fetish, and "Virgil Wander" is jam-packed with such eccentricities - baseball, surfing, beachcombing, fishing, classic films, taxidermy, Jeep Wagoneers. Reading the novel is like walking into your beloved uncle's bachelor pad: Every page is packed with curios and brimming with delightful nostalgia. But the nostalgia is well modulated. As Virgil's memory begins to resolve, so does the glimmer of his small town begin to fade. Greenstone, Minn., is a Rust Belt port, a little pockmark along Highway 61 up to Canada. Is it beautiful? Sure, but mostly because of the lake and seasons. Its monolithic ore dock is an everyday reminder of the town's decay, as are the vacancies along Main Street and Virgil's own derelict movie theater. Against this richly drawn background, Enger weaves in a few different strands, including some that explore notions of fatherlessness and orphanhood. Every narrative thread is infused with the magical. Greenstone is a place where phantoms lurk out on the big lake, where old men fly kites into the fangs of lightning and where there's always an outside chance Bob Dylan might stroll onto the Main Street stage. Enger has endowed Minnesota's North Shore with a luminousness reminiscent of Annie Proulx's Newfoundland. It is a strange time to live in small-town America. For those of us far from America's big cities, there is a sense that we're somehow culpable for Trump, that we don't get it, that we're behind the times. There is a mystery to why we persist, why we stay when everyone else leaves. Enger, I think, feels that the hangers-on believe. They're fighters and romantics; they're outdoorspeople. Many of them are simply determined to avoid lights and noise and crowds. Enger's first novel in 10 years marks him as a foremost stylist. His prose is rhapsodic, kaleidoscopic and - I'll say it - enviable. Even more enviable is the rare feat of writing a comedic literary novel that is also a page-turner. He's performing on a trapeze that not many others have even reached for. That said, some of Enger's stylistic choices come with consequences. I've lived in the Midwest my whole life and never once, for example, heard a 16-yearold gas-station attendant utter the word "ghastly." Moments like this pull the reader out of an otherwise spellbinding story. Enger deserves to be mentioned alongside the likes of Richard Russo and Thomas McGuane. "Virgil Wander" is a lush crowd-pleaser about meaning and second chances and magic. And in these Trumpian times, isn't that just the kind of book and protagonist we're all searching for? NICKOLAS BUTLER'S next novel, "Little Faith," will be published in March. Greenstone is a place where phantoms lurk out on the big lake.
Library Journal Review
In his long-awaited new novel, Enger (Peace Like a River) takes us on one man's moving journey of renewal after his car skids on an icy road and lands in Lake Superior. Virgil Wander escapes with short-term memory loss, followed by visions of a dark figure no one else can see. For 25 years an unassuming resident of Greenstone, MN, a once vibrant town now in decline, Virgil works part-time as a city clerk and is the proud owner of the Empress Theater, which shows classic movies. Strangely, he feels the preaccident Virgil, self-effacing and apologetic, died in the accident; the vigorous new Virgil won't be pushed around. After almost burning down his kitchen, he takes on a curious roommate, Rune Eliassen, who arrives on a mission to find his missing son, Alec, a semifamous baseball player who took off from Greenstone in a small plane and never returned. VERDICT With an unexpected dry wit, Enger pens a loosely woven plot about plucky Greenstone residents working to rejuvenate their town but finding a bonus in their own renewed enthusiasm for life. Surprises and delights throughout; definitely worth waiting for. [See Prepub Alert, 4/19/18.]-Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
