Customer Reviews

Riding The Two - An English Creek Story

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Doig's characters are just incredible. His sense of humor is immense. His description of the depression years in Montana is fascinating. And of course, the landscapes inspired by his acquaintance with the countryside depicted in ENGLISH CREEK are breathtaking. This is the best book I have read in ages! I am going to find a way to work it into my American literature course, because it is not only a great book, it's a priceless piece of Americana.

I uncovered Doig's "Dancing at the Rascal Fair" at a small bookstore in Oregon many years ago. Since then, his books have earned a "do not loan" status on my bookshelf. I'll tell friends how much I love his books, but they have to buy their own copies. English Creek is one of my favorites. It immersed me in Montana, in a young boy's summer, in the fold of time between childhood and adulthood. While some of Doig's books have a darker, gritty, edge, English Creek made me laugh outloud. I've just ordered three more copies to give as gifts to friends who I know will love the premise, the prose and the portrait of life on the edge of growing up.

This is a very good coming of age novel - historical novel. Set in rural Montana on the eve of World War II, English Creek describes the summer experiences of an intelligent 15 year old. Written by a Montana native who has done a good deal of historical research, English Creek is not only a Bildungsroman but also a detailed portrait of life in rural Montana. Told with humor and considerable insight, English Creek is a sweet but not saccharine book about a more innocent but not necessarily easier time.

ENGLISH CREEK is about a boy's awakening into maturity. It's the summer of his 15th birthday and Jick McCaskill experiences new awareness -- of his history as well as of his relationships with and among family and friends. His sense of security is threatened when his older brother defies their parents to take up with a local beauty and become a cowboy instead of going to college. Jick is challenged by unexpected changes in new grown-up ways and as he meets those challenges he sees himself and his world through a dying innocence.

To say Doig's prose is rich and powerful is like describing a tornado as breezy. A master of the English language, story-teller par excellence and character builder supreme, funny, intelligent, witty, sad is to understate. Superlatives fall short of accuracy. Ivan Doig's books are as real as life itself. To contemplate his words is to rethink reality and to embrace new insights.

A reviewer of Mr. Doig's "English Creek" notes that it does not deal with a "dysfunctional family". The other current fad the author avoids is the emphasis on "quirkiness" vs. character. Like Wallace Stegner and David Guterson, Mr. Doig's feeling for the land is aparent in his careful and lovely descriptions. Most of all, he presents us with characters so well developed and described we feel we know them. This emphasis on believable characters is, in my estimation, the strongest point of "Dancing at the Rascal Fair" and "English Creek". I enjoyed both tremendously and look froward to finishing the Montana trilogy.

Like the other novels of Ivan Doig that I have read, ENGLISH CREEK might fall shy of great literature, but it certainly is top-notch storytelling. Doig's narrator for this story is Jick McCaskill, who has as personable a narrative style as one could want. Looking back over more than a quarter century, Jick tells the story of his summer of 1939, when he was 14 and grew from boy to young man. His story moves along at a leisurely pace, but it never stalls, largely because of the wry humor and charm of both his narration and many of his characters. And in telling the story, Jick/Doig give us what I am confident is a realistic picture of ranching life in Northwest Montana, at the foot-hills of the Rockies as they rise out of the plains, just before WWII. Particularly vivid and memorable are extended set pieces of a community Fourth of July (with picnic, rodeo, and square dance), end-of-summer haying, and fighting a raging forest fire.

It may well be that the book will appeal most to readers "of a certain age," as they say. I am uncertain what the cut-off is (about 45?), but for those who have passed the threshold I have little doubt that they will enjoy the story immensely.

This is a fabulous book. The writing is not focused on action and plot, but on character and setting. Doig creates a vivid Montana scene while leading his main character, Jick, through a book paced exactly as his summer. If you are looking for good literature, read this book.

Doig's writing, like so many who are from Montana and write about it, captures nature beautifully. Like other writers from this area (Norm McClean comes to mind) Doig paints a beautiful picture of plains, mountains, and of course the weather becomes a character in itself. My only disappointment was the denouement in the end. It rather strained the credibility of an otherwise realistic story. I would rather Doig had stayed away from actually telling a story, and had made it more a novel "about nothing." For this reason, I enjoyed "This House of Sky" more, but this is still a novel which I feel falls into the class of literature, rather than popular fiction. For me, that is high praise indeed.

Doig details the life of the 14-year-old Jick in Two Medicine Country. This is a subtle, slice of life book that in the end will split your heart like a close knit family suddenly breaking apart. The images of the people of Two Medicine Country, the dance scene, and the relationship of Jick with his older brother fall into your mind like your own memories. This is the masterpiece by one of this century's best.

Chronologically, English Creek is the second in Doig's Montana trilogy--better to read Dancing at the Rascal Fair first. This one gives us Montana frontier life in the 30s and invites one to continue with his contemporary book three, Ride with Me, Mariah Montana. I enjoyed all three and also recommend The Whistling Season.