Review 12: Virgil Wander

Virgil Wander by Leif Enger
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Virgil Wander is the main character, who, as the book opens, is just recovering from an accident where his car flew off the road and into the freezing cold Lake Superior. By sheer good luck a friend saw the accident and dove in to save Virgil from certain death and instead only being concussed. Recovering from the concussion takes time, if not the rest of his life, one thing he was struggling with was the loss of adjectives, slowly some would come back.

The small town, Greenstone, Minnesota where Virgil lives is a unique place with bad luck. The people seems unique as well, for the most part, but not all. The book is quirky, lighthearted really but the situations that occur, death or possible death always looming is not light.

Virgil is the owner of the small run down theater that also runs in the red, so he works for the city as a clerk. One of the main people is Rune, an older man who loves to make and fly intricate kites. He came to Greenstone to find out about his son he recently found out he had, the mother had never told him and Rune only find out upon her death. Rune's son is a famous in a tragic way, a minor league baseball player turned neon sign makers, who disappeared in a small plane never to be heard of again. Since he had some fame the story was somewhat known.

Overall the book was well written. It took me a little while to get into the book, quite a while. It may have been easy to just put down and not get back to. The book is more about a character or characters, not plot driven. Yet it flowed along, more around mid-point than near the beginning where it's easier to keep you hooked to the story.


Thanks to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book, even though I ended up reading the print copy from the library where I work.