I will fall for a book with a unique, compelling narrative voice—or voices—every time. Maggie O’Farrell’s This Must Be the Place. Amor Towles’s A Gentleman in Moscow. North Woods by Daniel Mason. And so I fell for the first-person narrator of I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger, who starts the book by telling us “Here at the beginning it must be said the End was on everyone’s mind.” A casual, genial voice, not concerned about getting all the commas in the right places, not given to drama. A man who is named Rainier, “after the western mountain,” but who is called Rainy, after the “dominant local weather” where he and his wife live on Lake Superior.

The book takes place in some future time when dividing a society between the Haves and the Have Nots reaches its dystopian conclusion. Corrupt billionaires use the desperate underclass for their own ends while the country’s infrastructure falls to pieces. Bartering for goods is common. Being able to fix things is a necessity. But Rainy accepts the way things are, content to play bass in a band, tend to his troubled friends, and to love his wife, Lark. In a country where more and more people—including the president—are illiterate, Lark owns a bookstore. Because of her, Rainy too is a lover of books. So it is not surprising that after a tragedy sends Rainy out onto the lake in search of his beloved wife, his journey resembles the challenges of the Odyssey.

Rainy meets these challenges with steadfast commitment, and every setback opens to new opportunities, new paths. Despite his own sorrow, he does what he can for others, even bartering away his most prized possession in order to save a young girl from a dangerous man.

The story engrossed me. The characters, both better and worse, and the unexpected trials and moments of grace Rainy encounters thoroughly suspended my disbelief in this disturbing world Enger creates. That is largely thanks to Rainy, how he describes people and places and events, and the way he explains the choices he makes in relation to those people and events.

My fondness for this book comes down to Rainy’s voice. His metaphors: “… a bunch of loose papers in the back took flight and flapped all around like somebody’s wits.” The sentient quality of Lake Superior: “Like always I stepped outside first to see what the lake was thinking.” The ways he describes his wife: “… beyond her bewitching voice I wished to look at her forever. Her twisty dark hair fleeing its restraints. Her wine-dark river’s kiss of a birthmark. Chancing a single casual glance at her green eyes, I got an impression of curiosity and wit and maybe a little mockery zipping around back there like fireflies”; and “As for Lark she seemed to incandesce, to move over the floor not touching the boards.”

And the way Rainy talks directly to the reader: “If I say I forget, is that okay?” And “I’m going to look away, soon. I’ll have to look away and trust you’ll understand.”

I will read this book again just so Rainy can talk to me again.