Writing: 5+ Story: 5 Characters: 5

A wonderful book — perfect for fans of Kent Haruf, Ivan Doig, and Wallace Stegner. I hope that it is nominated for (and wins!) the Pulitzer Prize. It is that good.

The story takes place in Greenstone, Minnesota — a fading town in the Northern wilds of Minnesota, near Lake Superior. It is the story of the fading town, the fading men in it, and the opportunity of redemption and resurrection for both. While there are strong, interesting, female characters as well, the real focus is on the men — not the stereotype of men, but real individuals at different stages of life with their own internal struggles and desires. I loved the insight into each and every one of these characters.

Virgil Wander, the eponymous protagonist, is a fading man himself. He describes himself as “a Midwestern male cruising at medium altitude, aspiring vaguely to decency, contributing to PBS, moderate in all things including romantic forays, and doing unto others more or less reciprocally.” He runs the town’s Majestic theater — badly in need of a new roof and a more significant audience. The story opens when his car takes a dive off a bridge and he sails into the frigid water. Rescued by happenstance, he is a teetering, tottering, slightly damaged version of himself. He doesn’t recognize his clothes, has trouble finding the right words, and has inexplicably lost his fear of speaking up. He has become “impervious to sarcasm.”

It is full of wonderful characters such as Rune, a kite-flying, pixie of an elderly man from Tromso, who arrives to find out more about the son he never knew he had; Tom Beaman, the Samoan journalist and owner of the local paper (and Genghis, a pet raccoon); Shad Pea, an elderly fisherman with a wife in care and a disturbed son; Nadine and her son Bjorn, the wife and son of the missing Alec Sandstrom, and Adam Leer, son of the town’s original founder who made good in Hollywood, but has somehow come to embody all that is negative in the town — a smiling predator.

The language is beautiful — the description of places, people, and the things that are important to them (fishing, kite-flying, baseball) is suffused with a kind of magic that captures their very essence in just a few choice words. Every page is delightful with both despair and hope somehow tangled together.

Great lines:

“Yet it was also true he had a headful of spiders which woke now and then and altered his personal scenery.”

“It was disconcerting to think it might’ve shown itself at last, only to be swaddled in the bubble-wrap of concussion.”

“What I suddenly missed as Bjorn talked away, was the easy arrival of interests. Of obsessions.”

“ He had the heartening bulk of the aging athlete defeated by pastry”

“His gentle baritone came at me like elbows.”

“Within weeks certain prodigal words started filtering home. They came one at a time or in shy small groups.”

“He had a hundred merry crinkles at his eyes and a long-haul sadness in his shoulders.”

“I appear briefly as a ‘sun-deprived projectionist’ with ‘a degree of forbearance approaching perpetual defeat.’ “

“It’s never been hard for me to fall in love, a quality that has yet to simplify one single day of my life.”

Leif Enger is a damn fine writer and I’m glad he’s written this book, because it’s been 10 years since his last one. A small town on the shore of Lake Superior in upper Minnesota is peopled with unforgettable characters, including the title protagonist, all wounded but most hardy, and a plot line that’s both true and imaginative simultaneously. I miss Greenstone already.

This character driven book, set in northern Minnesota, is good for fans of A Man Called Ove. When the story starts, Virgil Wander has just survived a life-threatening car accident and is just beginning to mend. We meet the different townspeople who all aid in his recovery as he works to reconnect with his life and to move forward in a more meaningful way.

This book touched me in a way that surprised me. As I first began reading I felt felt disjointed and a little confused, but then clarity set it. I believe that was the intention of the author. Virgil's car goes over a cliff into frigid Lake Superior, but he is rescued. The trauma to his body was relatively minor in comparison to what could have happened. He is more concerned with his decreased vocabulary. He finds himself searching for adjectives and is dis-satisfied with his ability to retrieve them as needed. So starts Virgil's recovery. As the story proceeds, my confusion receded, and as the story advances, Virgil's vocabulary and clarity increase. I fell a little in love with Virgil and the quirky characters of Greenstone, MN.

If I had to assign a theme or genre to this novel I am not sure I could. It is the story of life in a dying, small town in the upper mid-west. The characters are unique, yet hearty, not ready to throw in the towel and abandon their sleepy town where nothing much happens. There is a mystery around Mr. Leer and how those who come in contact with him suffer tragically. There is budding romance, teen angst, and every day life and living. As I was reading I was reminded of Larry McMurtury's book Texasville (a book I truly adore); Dwayne and Virgil seem cut from the same cloth. It's a whole lot of living told in small details and all about the small moments that make up lives. It's a story of how we get caught up in something we never meant to happen, but also, how tragedy and loss can be turned around and how life can be a miracle all in itself.

I loved this book. I really did not want it to end. I am so grateful to Net Galley and Grove Press for the opportunity to read this book in advance. I have never read Leif Enger's books, but look forward to reading more. Thank you for this delightful book! #VirgilWander #NetGalley

It’s been ten years since his last book, but Leif Enger fans won’t be disappointed in this character-driven novel set in a small Minnesota town. Virgil Wander is recovering from a traumatic brain injury received when he and his car went over a cliff. Wander is rescued from Lake Superior by—appropriately enough—the local salvage man. The injury led to some altered brain function for Wander, including some lost memories. Wander, who owns the local movie theater where he occasionally hosts private showings from his secret—probably illegal—stash of classics, gets help putting his life back together from an assortment eccentric characters. Enger’s depiction of a down-on-its-luck midwestern town is warm and funny and full of heart.

Author's note: This review will appear online and in print in (Boone, NC) Mountain Times on Oct. 4, 2018:

Virgil Wander has lost the ability to modify his life, and for a man whose foundation is built on a staid lack of modification, that could be damning, indeed.

Before Virgil — the hero of Leif Enger’s tremendous new book, “Virgil Wander: A novel” (Grove Press) — plunges off the road and into icy Lake Superior, his life is on modification control, or as he describes it, “cruising along at medium altitude.”

After the accident, and after being plucked from the water by an unlikely savior who had no real reason, given the weather, for being where he was when he was, Virgil can no longer mentally form adjectives. While such a fate easily could be dooming to the protagonist of a novel, it becomes a running theme that Enger exploits beautifully. Because Virgil has to work so hard to find the right words to describe the small Midwestern town he inhabits, they are always spot-on, perfect descriptors.

In fact, part of the sheer joy of this book — Enger’s first in a decade, and only the second since his prize-winning book-of-the-year “Peace Like a River” — is reading the author’s gift for language and metaphor.

In the small town of Greenstone, Minn., there is a “bright hungry woman,” a “big specimen with translucent fuzz on his cheeks and Christmas yearning in his eyes,” a man with the “heartening bulk of the aging athlete defeated by pastry.”

That the author can gift us with throwaway lines such as “this he stated in a flattened voice like a wall hastily built to conceal ruins” or “my houseguest was an Arctic kite flyer who called up the wind like a take-out pizza” suggest the well is deep.

And, it is.

Just as deep is Enger’s story. Virgil, a city clerk cum movie theater owner and operator, is surrounded by characters who would feel most at home in a Roy Clarke novel. Largely downtrodden and dejected, Greenstone, as Virgil describes, is “filled with people who could make you sad just by strolling into view.” More telling, the narrator posits, “I realized I was one of them.”

For some it is lack of opportunity, for others simple bad luck compounded by bad choices. For Virgil, it is inertia. As he tells us, for someone of his name, he’s stayed an awful long time in the same place.

Yet, it is only amidst the broken that healing is necessary — or achievable. So it is, here: A colorful cast of characters complemented by the quotidian pleasures of small town life conspire to charm, welcome and teach us in that age-old way, through a story.

The lesson? There are so many, so lovingly given, but centering on this: “Don’t let anyone tell you that looking out for your vulnerable is less than a full-time deal. … The surface of everything is thinner than we know. A person can fall right through, without any warning at all.”

So, be warned. You will fall for Virgil and the others who bring Greenstone to life. You will learn to look at things differently — differently in the way only a person who has no words to describe them must look.

A charming story of lives and loves, lost and found in a hard luck Midwestern town. With endearing characters and beautiful, unhurried writing, this novel, the author's first in ten years, is well worth the wait.

Some books are page turners just to get to the end, some are just so good you can’t wait to get back to them, and then the mysteries you hurry to find the answers, but some are the special ones that you just need to sit back, relax, enjoy and take it in. This is that special kind of book by Leif Enger, it’s a wonderful ride to a little Midwestern town. We get to meet Virgil Wander, he’s had a life changing event, and then we meet a whole bunch of other characters that all have special stories that touch us. It’s like coming home to your home town. Everyone knows everyone else and they all get along for better or worse.
I thoroughly enjoyed this story, the writing is excellent, the storyline draws you in and you come to care about almost all of the characters. The descriptions are great, you can picture the Buick down in the bottom of the lake, the bicycle that has replaced it, the Audi that is dragging the ground and the movie theatre.
If you want a fast paced murder mystery this book is not for you, but if you want a story that will stay with you and you just want to actually sit back and read a well written novel to remind us of why we read in the first place, this one is for you. I loved it. Another great book by Leif Enger.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Grove Atlantic/Grove Press through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. This one gets 5*****’s. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This is a beautiful book that tells the story of a small town and the people in it. I loved it and hope the author doesn't wait another ten years to write a book.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a free copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased review of it.

This is small town America. Gone are the days of busy main streets, today main street is mostly empty. Leif Enger brings us the people that remained as the town declined and they are characters. He wraps them around the town and tells their stories, weaving them together until you feel like you are there.

After a decade away, the author of the classic Peace Like a River is back with a beautiful story of life in the hard luck town of Greenstone on the shores of Lake Superior. The story begins with Virgil Wander flying off the cliff in his old Pontiac, suffering a traumatic brain injury and needing his eclectic group of friends to heal him in every way: the Finnish man in search of his son; the widow and her son caught in a constant loop of uncertainty; the hermit-like wealthy son, steeped in ugliness; the mayor trying to lift her town back into relevance; the handyman who searches for meaning and purpose; the hardscrabble family who battles poverty and a big fish. Virgil is the axis they all spin around as the heart of this community is revealed. Enger's new book will grip your heart and make you smile as it engulfs you in this kite-flying, stolen-movie-watching, endearing crowd.

Well, now i know the book I am buying everyone for Christmas! VIRGIL WANDER is lovely, rich and multi-layered. It's like eating the perfect sandwich; not fancy, but so delicious your never want it to end. Leif Enger brings the imaginary town of Greenstone to life and captures the atmosphere along the shores of Lake Superior beautifully. But what really makes this such a unique and magical tale are the fascinating characters Enger creates. They are so unusual and so well-drawn that you will wish you knew them. and this book will definitely make you want to go fly a kite! And if you haven't read Enger's earlier work, PEACE LIKE A RIVER, get it immediately - it's just as good as VIRGIL WANDER!

What a gorgeous, quirky, and utterly charming book! Leif Enger may have made us wait 10 years since his last book, but his newest, Virgil Wander, is definitely worth the wait.

Virgil Wander is the slightly curmudgeonish owner of The Empress, a movie theater in decline in the town of Greenstone, Minnesota—which is also in the midst of its decline. One evening, on a snowy night in early autumn, Virgil's car goes flying off a bridge and into the frigid Lake Superior. Fortunately, the owner of the town's local salvage yard happened to be hunting for saleable wares on the shore when Virgil's car went airborne, so he was able to save Virgil's life.

Amazingly, Virgil comes out of the accident concussed, struggling with finding the correct words (particularly adjectives) and living with the memory lapses typical of those sustaining brain injuries. At the same time, he emerged with a different personality, more endearing, decisive, friendly, caring—qualities which are much appreciated by the motley group of friends and townspeople who live in Greenstone.

"If I were to pinpoint when the world began reorganizing itself—that is, when my seeing of it began to shift—it would be the day a stranger named Rune blew into our bad luck town of Greenstone, Minnesota, like a spark from the boreal gloom."

Into this broken town comes Rune, an affable Norwegian man and kite-creating magician. He came after learning that his last trip to the United States years and years ago led to the birth of a son he never knew about—only to learn that this son, minor league baseball pitcher Alec Sandstrom, had died, in a mysterious plane crash. Alec was a mythical figure in the small town, and his disappearance still affected many, including his widow, Nadine, and their teenage son, Bjorn.

As Rune tries to assemble a portrait of the son he never knew, and perhaps start a relationship with the grandson he didn't know he had, he and Virgil build a close friendship, with each depending on each other. But the gorgeous kites that Rune creates and flies captivate the town's residents, who feel freer, unburdened after taking a turn at the strings.

However, Greenstone has been known as a town of hard luck for many years, and it will continue to live up to its reputation. The town's residents experience tragedies, strange occurrences, and the return of a prodigal son whose presence both enlivens and frightens. And while Greenstone's residents show their characteristic resilience, they also experience moments of extreme joy and connection, all set against the gorgeous, open, Midwestern landscape.

This is a difficult book to describe, but it felt so wonderful, almost like a hug in literary form. The novel meanders a bit, and these characters are definitely Midwestern Quirky, but they are so charming and endearing. At times it almost takes on a fairy-tale quality, but it isn't fantastical or beyond the pale of reality, for the most part.

Virgil Wander is a book about rebuilding your life and finding yourself again, about fighting the battles you need to in order to move on, about friendship, family, love, and the charm of a small town where everyone knows everyone's business. Enger is a magnificent writer, as evidenced by his two earlier books, Peace Like a River and So Brave, Young, and Handsome, and he deserves a place alongside writers such as Kent Haruf.

You won't be able to get this one out of your mind—or your heart.

NetGalley and Grove Atlantic provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

Virgil Wander ruefully, though not sadly, brings you through the recent history of Greenstone, MN, on the chill shore of Lake Superior. The story he tells meanders, touching gently and significantly on mundane tragedies and rolling waves of life. You will be glad for the time you spend with Virgil, Nadine, Rune and the rest of the hard luck people who comfort one other like the lift of kites.

Leif Enger is one of my favorite writers and I've waited for so long for a new novel that I was almost afraid to start reading Virgil Wander. But I did . . . I did . . . at a savoring pace, because I could not bear for it to end. I was enraptured. His voice. The town. The kites. The imagery. The deep sense of loss and rebirth. The story is luminous and unique and entirely wonderful. I'm still thinking about it and imagine I will be for months to come.

This book contains a cast of memorable characters. The writing is consistently beautiful. I need to read more by this author.

"Greenstone was full of people who could make you sad just by strolling into view." The mining town on Lake Superior's shore seemed to have outlived its shelf life, but there were those who continued living there despite decreasing opportunity and prospect. At least that was Virgil's feeling at the outset. Virgil, having just suffered a near death experience behind the wheel, finds his perspective has changed and his senses heightened, almost as if he's a new person. As the story unfolds and the plot expands, he is joined by fellow townsmen and recent arrivals that provide a richness that reminded me of the works of Richard Russo, of Ron Rash. From the Norwegian kite artist who weaves spells with his creations, to the scion of the town's founder who may or may not be the embodiment of evil, and even a murderous sturgeon. The lives of the town embodied by these and others zing off the page. I, for one, had no idea that there is viable surfing on the Minnesota shores of Lake Superior -- and thanks to UTube, was able to see these ice covered daredevils whose waves may not rival those of warmer climates, but whose temperatures add a deeper level of commitment to the sport.

There is some lovely writing here ("...I didn’t have to apply any adjectives to the toast, only plenty of butter.") But I don't want to quote any more since future readers should discover this book for themselves.