Virgil Wander

By Leif Enger, Grove Atlantic, 2018, 300 pages
Reviewed by Sharon Stasiowski, May 8, 2022

I fell in love with Virgil Wander and the people of the town of Greenstone, Minnesota, along the shores of Lake Superior.

Virgil drives through a barrier into the lake during a snowstorm. He is rescued, and the book begins the day he is released from the hospital in Duluth. Virgil tells his story about his town and the people in it with great charm and humor. It is the story of how his life changes after the accident. We meet the residents of the town, and what a great cast of characters they are.

A stranger named Rune, a kite flier who crafts his own, comes to town the day Virgil returns to Greenstone. The man and his kites attract several of the characters, including Virgil. There is more to his story, and it plays out alongside Virgil's awakening. There is a mystery, though that was not what captured me. I enjoyed the journey with Virgil and the gang. I did not want to leave this town of Greenstone.

This is Leif Enger's third novel. I read "Peace Like a River," his first, last year and enjoyed it, but Virgil captured my heart.

If you enjoy a tale well told, I recommend this book to you.

Reviewed by Jim Stasiowski, April 27, 2023

I really, really wanted to like “Virgil Wander,” if for no other reason than that Sharon very much liked it and recommended it to me.

The good: Leif Engler is a skilled writer who started with an inventive premise of microscoping small-town Midwest-goofy.

The irritating: Engler seems to have gotten himself tangled in a neo-Biblical yarn, populating fictitious Greenstone, Minnesota, with at least two savior-types (Virgil Wander, owner of the town’s movie theater; Rune, the Norwegian old-timer and kite-flyer), a ghost (Alec), a surfer (Bjorn a third candidate for savior), a Satanic presence (Adam) and an ethereal female character (Nadine) who is Bjorn’s mom and who, for a long time, is virginal (but, to be fair, not a virgin).

And there is a big fish.

(At different times, both Virgil and Rune seem to rise from the dead, and I consider surfing the most human way to walk on water.)

Engler is especially likable when he delivers an offbeat observation: Parades always make me cringe – the sight of so many people lockstepping along, chests out, elbows pumping, seemed to denote an unearned pride or a humiliating need for attention.  

Although a lot of the action is fun in the inexplicable way humans dither around with their shoelaces untied, Engler, in search of an ending, traps himself, madly casting about for a way out of Greenstone, and the way he chooses seems forced, unconvincing.

Read it, then take sides: Sharon or me?