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May 24, 2011

Jeanette rated it:

This was my first Ivan Doig, and it won't be my last. What an unexpected delight! Doig's deliciously droll delivery and richly drawn characters make him the kind of storyteller we all wish for and rarely find. There's something so comforting and lyrical about the subtle repetition of themes and that perfect narrative voice---what Ivan Doig himself calls "the poetry of the vernacular."

The characters in The Whistling Season just pop right off the page. I miss them already. More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Aug 06, 2010

Renata rated it:

Reading this story made me wonder again what are the stories we want to tell about our country's history and the people who settled the west? Doig reminds us that many of the homesteaders were intelligent, inquisitive and adventurous, all willing to work harder than most of us can imagine to live a full life and what we came to call the American dream - to claim land of their own. This novel reminds me of Wallace Stegner in the way the author richly describes the life of the mind of the charac More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jul 07, 2008

Barbara rated it:

This is a beautiful book. Doig's use of language is thoughtful and clever. Sly, quiet jokes are tucked into the text here and there and if you read too fast, you might read right past a good laugh. The story is composed of a perfect blend of both the joy and trouble that make up life and work out to be joy overall ("I laughed, I cried," as they say, but it's true here!). Doig evokes, as always, what it meant in times past to be part of a community. But this time, he gives hope to all o More...

0 comments like (12 people liked it)

Oct 27, 2008

Molly rated it:

Loved, loved this book! I loved the unforgettable characters and his writing was fabulous. I laughed out loud in parts, and I wanted to cry in others. His writing is witty and super descriptive. It wasn't predictable and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

There really isn't much to the plot at times, just a coming-of-age story of a widowed father and his 3 extremely likable sons and their life on a Montana homestead in the early 20th century. It is about their housekeeper they hire and her More...

6 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

megan rated it:

The oldest of three brothers growing up in Montana during the early 1900s narrarates this wonderful and joyful story. Paul Milliron's widower father sends for a housekeeper in Minnesota after reading an add that says "Can't Cook; Doesn't Bite" in their local newspaper. The housekeeper, Rose, moves to Montana with her brother Morty and the book really takes off from there. I started reading this book thinking that the tone would be a lot darker but it was actually a really uplifting b More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

William rated it:

Sometimes you just want a story of simplicity. You want to go to a place that reminds you of things about how you grew up and who you grew up among. You want a more recognizable time, even if the recognition is emotional rather than experiential. Maybe you just want a story that is a little less alienating than the one you find yourself in.

The Whistling Season is a lovely book of this kind of unapologetic simplicity: the issues are of character and growth, the characters are quirky a More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Nov 07, 2008

Amy rated it:

Why have I never heard of this author? He is an amazing writer! (I liken him to Wallace Stegner, Leif Enger, Marilynne Robinson.) I thoroughly enjoyed reading this quiet, humorous, intelligent book about homesteaders in Montana in 1910. I love the narrator (a 13-year-old boy-genius). I love the story. I love, love, love the language. I'm going to read Ivan Doig again as soon as possible.

2 comments like (6 people liked it)

Apr 05, 2009

Laura rated it:

"The Whistling Season" takes place in the mid-west in the early 1900’s. It is narrated by Paul a seventh grader who attends a one-room school house. His father is a widower and a farmer. The story is their struggle of living off the land and coping with loss. The tale takes a twist with the arrival of Rose the hired housekeeper who can’t cook and her intellectual brother. The two add intrigue to the ordinary lives of the main character and his family. Doig’s style is descriptive and he More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 12, 2010

Clif rated it:

This book is one of my all time favorites. It is "poetry of the vernacular". If this story doesn't capture your heart you must be a snobbish city dweller who has no appreciation of America's rural past. The setting is rural Montana in 1909, a one-room grade school, and a family of three young boys and their father still mourning the death of their mother (and wife) the previous year. It takes a skilled writer to turn such a plain setting into one of the most enjoyable, interesting More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 04, 2008

Christi rated it:

If you like "A Prairie Home Companion," you will love this book. It's got the same charming, organic, grass roots atmosphere as Garrison Keillor's stories, except that it's set in 1909 Montana instead of Minnesota. (Though there are some Scandinavian families involved.) The narrator remembers the year he was 13, when his recently widowed father hires a housekeeper, sight unseen, from a newspaper ad. She arrives in Montana with her brother Morris, who suddenly finds himself as teache More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 28, 2008

Marci rated it:

Ivan Doig is a fine, fine writer. In The Whistling Season, he tells the story of a widower living with his three sons on a dry farm in rural eastern Montana. He reads an advertisement for a woman living in the East who would like a housekeeping job and is willing to relocate to Montana. The ad states she doesn't cook, but she also doesn't bite. Rose comes to Montana to be the Millirons housekeeper and brings her brother, Morris, with her. This is a fine set-up for what could have been some pret More...

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Apr 27, 2009

Lon rated it:

Having grown up in Montana, I felt a certain duty to read Ivan Doig. I selected "The Whistling Season" based on library availability and hope that this title is representative of his other novels. Doig's writing style and character development have made me a big fan. He turns a beautiful phrase, but does so in an apparently effortless manner that provides richness without excess. Characters initially seem simple but develop into those you know and care about as if they were family.

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 11, 2007

Roberta rated it:

There are two stories here that are necessarily entwined - the current story of the adult Paul, school inspector, who has the sad task of informing the Marias Coulee school of its fate and the child Paul who lives through an uncertain time in the history of the same school. Even though the basic story was interesting and the characters were realistic, I had a very hard time staying interested in this book. I had to renew it twice, not because it was such difficult reading, but because I kept f More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 12, 2008

Knitknucklehead rated it:

This is an interesting book set in the past in rural eastern Montana where education still revolves around the one room school house and within the parental trades of family life. The Milliron family, who lost their wife/mother several years past, enlist the service of a woman from the east to help bring a sense of female responsibility and knowledge to their male saturated home. Although the father and head of this household holds education in the highest degree and has taught his three sons to More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 24, 2011

Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it:

This is a quite enjoyable read, but not literature. Doig paints a wonderful picture of the one-room schoolhouse on the prairie and life on a homestead in the Montana east of the Rockies. In fact, the narrator is writing from the perspective of 1957 just after the Sputkik launch and is remembering his childhood in a particular school. As the State Superintendent of Schools, he seems willing to write the eulogy for this education setting.

This was exactly what I needed to be reading jus More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Nov 24, 2008

Kaye marked it as to-read

I've loved every book I've read by this author, especially "Dancing at the Rascal Fair". Doig is a noted author who writes rich, detailed storeies about people usually living in the west (Montana, etc.).

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jan 07, 2009

Becky rated it:

It is a great story about a little town and a one-room schoolhouse. It sort of reminded me of Anne of Green Gables school experiences. I would have said this book was amazing but it took me a while to get into it and I was disappointed at the ending.

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"If I have learned anything in a lifetime spent overseeing schools, it is that childhood is the one story that stands by itself in every soul."

"Mothe More...

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Jan 04, 2009

Carolyn rated it:

"I suppose it was the point of life I was at, less than a man but starting to be something more than a boy, that set me aware of everything around, as though Marias Coulee School and its height of flagpole and depth of well were the axis of all that was in sight . . . There, in the dwindling light of the afternoon, I tried to take in that world between the manageable horizons. The cutaway bluffs where the Marias River lay low and hidden were the limit of field of vision in one direction. More...

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Aug 01, 2011

Jim added it

The narrator is Montana's Superintendent of Public Instruction. It's October 1957, and the U.S. is in a panic following the Soviet's launching of Sputnik. The state legislature is pressuring him to close the rural one room schoolhouses.

He spends most of the novel remembering 1909-1910, when he was in the 7th grade in a one room schoolhouse. His widowed father is the school board president, a dry land farmer and hauls freight in his horse drawn wagon. His father can't cook, he has his hands full More...

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Feb 14, 2011

Carolinecarver rated it:

Following the 1950's Sputnik orbit, State School Superendendent Oliver Milliron prepares to announce the consolodation of the one-room school ("small prarie arks of education")in Montana. As he considers a plan to bus children to large mega-schools, he thinks back (flashes would be too sudden a trip) to his own boyhood in a one-room school in rural Montana some 40 years earlier. This coming-of-age story is so beautifully told, so straightforward, so true, that I kept expecting some iro More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 08, 2010

Susan rated it:

Ivan Doig's The Whistling Season is a well-written, charming look into America's past. The lives of the Montana homesteaders and their families come to vivid life within the pages, allowing this reader to lose herself in the beauty of Doig's descriptions. The language Doig uses is artistic, exquisitely illustrating a way of life lost to us many years ago.

There are so many great things about The Whistling Season that I could quite literally write pages about it! The characters in are More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 03, 2010

Kris rated it:

A nice read. The first 40 pages, I thought it was just going to be an adult version of Sarah, Plain and Tall or a male version of the Penderwicks. Then the fabulous, lyrical, sweeping descriptions of Montana filled in and reminded me of Wallace Stegner, then it was Dead Poets' Society, then a Chicago Mafia caper, then it finished and ended up Sarah, Plain and Tall again.
Doig nailed the depiction of minds who love to learn, the desperation of frontier Montana in a drought, and the plethor More...

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May 19, 2010

Will rated it:

This is my first venture into Doig’s fiction. He is known as the definitive novelist of Montana, in the same way that Pat Conroy is the writer most associated with South Carolina. In anticipation of visiting Montana later this year (2010), it seemed appropriate to see what Doig had to say about the place. Of course, it might have required a bit of a time machine to step into the world depicted here. Maybe like reading Mary Poppins to get a sense of London.

Brothers Paul, Damon and Tob More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 15, 2010

Charlotte rated it:

Many years ago on an extended Griffith family trip that included driving across Montana, we listened to a audio tape called This House of Sky by Ivan Doig, a story of Ivan's childhood in Montana. I loved his descriptions of the land and the way he made the characters come alive. I listened to it again with my friend Hilary from Cornwall, UK in order to give her some insight of earlier life in this wide open country as we traveled together across South Dakota! So I was pleased when browsing th More...

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Sep 14, 2009

Julie rated it:

Paul Milliron is a seemingly insignificant child. Living with his father and 2 younger brothers on the plains of Montana in 1909, the motherless family knows hardship and good times in equal measure.

When Paul's father takes it upon himself to hire a housekeep from Minneapolis, Paul and his younger brothers are in for the treat of their life when Rose Llewellyn and her brother Morrie Morgan show up on their front steps.

Gradually the relationship between Mr. Milliron and Ro More...

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Mar 05, 2010

Peggy rated it:

After we read COLUMBINE (by Dave Cullen) last month in book club, this book was a breath of fresh air. (Columbine was really a tense read for most of us)

I was hooked almost immediately by the writing style. It was a great story with some very colorful characters, and I knew something was going to happen sooner or later so I was constantly anticipating that.

We reviewed it @ book club last night (The story is 1909-1910 in rural Montana) and a lot of the story centered aroun More...

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Nov 05, 2009

Amy (mrsAmy#s) rated it:

I had a hard time rating this book, so let me lay out the pros and cons.

Cons: Plot is a little dull compared to some other recent books I've read. I mean, it takes place out in Nowhere, Montana- so there's not a lot going on.

Pros: Perhaps part of the book's appeal is that despite the lack of real excitement, I definitely loved the characters enough that I wanted to keep reading. Which leads me to...

Pro: The characters were awesome. I feel like I know them, More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 19, 2010

Renee rated it:

Ivan Doig writes about a vanished way of life on the Western plains. A celebration tinged with sadness, his new novel. This novel is about a motherless family of three boys and a widower in a very small Montana town in 1910. A housekeeper is hired and her brother tags along from Minneapolis to the frontier. There the story begins.

The best way to describe the book may be to tell what it is not. It is not hokey or a father falling-in-love chic romance. Although the narrator is a teena More...

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Jun 22, 2009

Julie rated it:

Doig is a true blooded Western writer whose setting seems to always be Montana. I have really liked his books in the past, especially Dancing at the Rascal Fair. This book is the story of three boys and their father who hire a housekeeper to help them out after their mother dies. When the housekeeper arrives, she has her brother in tow who becomes the new school teacher at the one room school house for the homesteaders. The story is told from the eldest son’s point of view as he reflects on what More...

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Feb 12, 2009

Margot rated it:

Homestead life in Montana in the early 1900s: one-room schoolhouse, ethnic tension in the schoolyard between the Slavs and the Scandinavians, the excitement of new arrivals, Halley's comet, and no mention of the original inhabitants, except one passing comment about boarding schools. The main story of the youthful vigor of the three Milliron boys and their motherless household is interesting enough alone, but Doig adds in some tangential narratives that detract from the overall effect of the nov More...

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