Kerri's pick
 
 
Mystery character of the month and book of the week

This character is one of literature’s greediest and cruelest fictional creations. 

Even the name that the author attached to this character evokes malevolence and spite and the author made sure, in dialogue and description, that the reader loathed this person.

Portrayed as “high-shouldered and bony,” this character presents a rather fearsome face to the world with “no eyelashes and eyes of a red-brown.”  

The character often wears black and their limbs appear lanky and skeletal. Indeed, even the feel of this character’s hand in one’s own is “clammy and ghostly.”

This character likes to dispense homespun wisdom to our protagonist and stokes a not-so-secret flame of bitterness and inferiority. 

But the author who created this character clearly found them fascinating for the character has many of the best scenes in the story.

Do you know who this character and the author that created the character is?  When you have a guess, email me at: kmiller@mpr.org.

In the not-too-distant-but-still-dystopian future, a grieving husband sets sail on a creaky boat named Flower to find the spirit of his late wife.

And like any great quest story, the adventure is in the seeking, not the sought-after.

Leif Enger’s new novel is bursting with quixotic characters, mischief-making villains and a kind of whimsy that is both comforting and charming.

He’s also given Lake Superior a soul.  

“It’s called a lake,” Enger writes early in the story, “because it’s not salt but this corpus is a fearsome sea and if you live in its reach you should know at all times what it’s up to.”

Innocence, virtue and magic abound in Enger’s “I Cheerfully Refuse.”


— Kerri Miller | MPR News
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