{"id":3385,"date":"2019-01-02T08:51:36","date_gmt":"2019-01-02T14:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/?p=3385"},"modified":"2019-01-02T08:51:36","modified_gmt":"2019-01-02T14:51:36","slug":"virgil-wander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/2019\/01\/02\/virgil-wander\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgil Wander"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Leif Enger<\/h2>\n

Atlantic Monthly Press, 2018<\/h4>\n

\"Virgil<\/p>\n

Virgil Wander<\/i>, which by the way is the name of this novel\u2019s narrator, is set in Greenstone, a dying town in Northern Minnesota on the shores of Lake Superior. Virgil Wander runs a movie theater there that doesn\u2019t turn a profit. He\u2019s also the Town Clerk. He\u2019s also stuck, meaning his life doesn\u2019t have purpose or direction, he feels incomplete, he\u2019s caught in his past. This novel is the story of his re-birth, of the re-birth of the town, and of new beginnings for many of its characters.<\/p>\n

The novel opens just after Virgil has driven off the road on a snowy night and into the lake, rescued at the last minute by a friend who saw it happen. This near-death experience marks the beginning of Virgil\u2019s re-birth. \u00a0Sometimes it takes a blow to the head to re-set your vision. After it, he seems different. He sees differently. He behaves differently. And it\u2019s for the best. Then a stranger comes to town, a Norwegian man whose son lived in Greenstone. The man never met his son, who disappeared a decade ago, leaving a wife and young child. The man, named Rune, comes to Greenstone hoping to learn about his son, Alex. Rune makes kites\u2014not the kind you flew as a kid but beautiful, extravagant kites\u2014and Virgil takes him in as a houseguest. Rune has a magical quality of drawing people and animals to him, of putting people at ease, of warming them. He is the perfect companion for a narrator embarking of a change of perspective.<\/p>\n

Reviewers of Enger\u2019s other two novels, Peace Like a River<\/i> and So Brave, Young, and Handsome<\/i>, have described his prose as \u201ctwinkle-eyed,\u201d and commented on how easily he draws the reader into his narrative. He\u2019s also been called a \u201cmusical, sometimes magical\u201d storyteller. His prose is certainly warm-hearted, down-to-earth, engaging. Think of the News from Lake Woebegone without the edge. There is an element of magical realism in Enger\u2019s plotting. Reading Virgil Wander<\/i> you always have the sense of larger powers at work for good behind the events of the story. There are mythical elements to the narrative as well: \u00a0an ominous man that Virgil sees standing on the water and beckoning him into the lake; a giant sturgeon that is a teen-age boy\u2019s white whale; Rune\u2019s extravagant kites that change people when they fly them.<\/p>\n

At one point in the novel, Virgil is talking to an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles about the Midwest. The exchange goes, in part, like this:<\/p>\n

\u201cYour caution sounds Midwestern,\u201d I told him.
\n\u201cI aspire to the Midwest.\u201d
\n\u201cDon\u2019t be fooled by our modest dress, we\u2019re surprisingly devious.\u201d
\n\u201cEven I have seen Fargo<\/i>, and it isn\u2019t your modesty I admire. It\u2019s your
\nsolitude.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is undoubtedly a Midwestern novel, from laconic exchanges like this one to the narrator\u2019s self-deprecating tone, to the off-kilter characters, to the overlay of mythic elements that invest the ordinary with deeper meaning.<\/p>\n

If you seek an ironic but ultimately warm-hearted, hopeful, and forgiving story told through beautifully crafted prose, Virgil Wander<\/i> is for you.<\/p>\n

Back to the Bookshelf<\/a><\/em><\/h2>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Virgil Wander, which by the way is the name of this novel\u2019s narrator, is set in Greenstone, a dying town in Northern Minnesota on the shores of Lake Superior. Virgil Wander runs a movie theater there that doesn\u2019t turn a profit. He\u2019s also the Town Clerk. He\u2019s also stuck, meaning his life doesn\u2019t have purpose or direction, he feels incomplete, he\u2019s caught in his past. This novel is the story of his re-birth, of the re-birth of the town, and of new beginnings for many of its characters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1133,"featured_media":3387,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pdas-bookshelf"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/files\/2019\/01\/VWander4x3.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3385"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3389,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3385\/revisions\/3389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}