The Whistling Season (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "WHEN I VISIT THE BACK CORNERS OF MY LIFE AGAIN AFTER so long a time, littlest things jump out first..." (more)
Key Phrases: comet night, buffalo jump, short pier, Marias Coulee, Aunt Eunice, Brose Turley (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

[Signature]Reviewed by Rick BassAny writer's work should be judged solely on its own merits, yet in this fine novel by Ivan Doig, one may be forgiven for marveling at the creation of such a work at an advanced stage of this writer's illustrious career. (Wallace Stegner—to whom, as with Doig, landscape was character and event in any story, and particularly Western landscapes—comes to mind with his classic Crossing to Safety.)Like many of Doig's earlier novels, The Whistling Season is set in the past in rural eastern Montana—and addresses that time and place in distinct, uncluttered prose that carries the full enthusiasm of affection and even love—for the landscape, the characters, and the events of the story—without being sentimental or elegiac. The novel is narrated by an aging Montana state superintendent of schools, Paul Milliron, who is charged with deciding the fate of the state's last scattered rural schools, and who, in the hours preceding his meeting to determine those schools' fate, recalls the autumn of 1909, when he was 13 and attending his own one-room school in Marias Coulee.Recently widowed, Paul's father, overwhelmed by the child-rearing duties presented by his three sons, in addition to his challenging farming duties, hires a housekeeper, sight unseen, from a newspaper ad. The housekeeper, Rose, proclaims that she "can't cook but doesn't bite." She turns out to be a beguiling character, and she brings with her a surprise guest—her brother, the scholarly Morris, who, though one of the most bookish characters in recent times, also carries brass knuckles and—not to give away too much plot—somehow knows how to use them.The schoolteacher in Marias Coulee runs away to get married, leaving Morris to step up and take over her job. The verve and inspiration that he, an utter novice to the West, to children and to teaching children, brings to the task is told brilliantly and passionately, and is the core of the book's narrative, with its themes of all the different ways of knowing and learning, at any age.Doig's strengths in this novel are character and language—the latter manifesting itself at a level of old-fashioned high-octane grandeur not seen previously in Doig's novels, and few others': the sheer joy of word choices, phrases, sentences, situations, and character bubbling up and out, as fecund and nurturing as the dryland farmscape the story inhabits is sere and arid. The Whistling Season is a book to pass on to your favorite readers: a story of lives of active choice, lived actively. (June)Rick Bass is the Pushcart and O. Henry award-winning author of more than 20 fiction and nonfiction books. His second novel, The Diezmo, will be published in June.
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From The Washington Post

Ivan Doig writes about a vanished way of life on the Western plains with the kind of irony-free nostalgia that seems downright courageous in these ironic times. A celebration tinged with sadness, his new novel, The Whistling Season, tells a story twice removed from us: It's the late 1950s, and that little Soviet satellite has startled the United States into an educational panic. Paul Milliron, the narrator, is superintendent of the Montana schools, and he's come to Great Falls to make a sad announcement to the superintendents, teachers and school boards of Montana's 56 counties: In pursuit of greater efficiency and rigor, the state has decided to close all its one-room schoolhouses. "What is being asked, no, demanded of me," Paul laments, "is not only the forced extinction of the little schools. It will also slowly kill those rural neighborhoods, the ones that have struggled from homestead days on to adapt to dryland Montana." As the burden of making that speech weighs on h!

im, Paul remembers his own experience in a one-room school 43 years earlier, and that reverie forms the body of this charming novel.

"When I visit the back corners of my life again after so long a time," he begins, "littlest things jump out first." Indeed, this story is mostly a collection of "littlest things," but all of them jump under the animating influence of Doig's vision. At 13, Paul was the oldest son of a widely respected homesteader named Oliver Milliron. A recently widowed father of three, he raised his boys in an idyllic atmosphere of deep affection and rich intellectuality, but the housekeeping had reached a crisis point: "We practiced downkeep," Paul admits. His father finally decided to hire someone to clean up and cook their meals. Perhaps the comic tone of an ad he spotted in the newspaper is what sealed his determination: "Can't Cook But Doesn't Bite. . . . Housekeeping position sought by widow. Sound morals, exceptional disposition."

When this woman arrives all the way from Minneapolis, she's everything they could have hoped for and more: Pretty, kind, industrious, full of interesting stories. "Just by showing up," Paul says, "she turned the mood of a place around the way a magnet acts on a compass."

Hmm, a witty, saintly father of three hires a beautiful widow with abundant charm: How on Earth does this turn out?

Okay, so the major arc of the plot isn't packed with suspense, but The Whistling Season isn't about the destination (which is a good thing, because some contrived surprises at the end are the novel's only real weakness). Nevertheless, complications arise from the fact that the new housekeeper doesn't arrive by herself. Her brother, Morrie, a quirky little man with an enormous mustache and a vocabulary to match, tags along. Rose and Morrie come with few possessions and even fewer explanations: vague rumors of a troubled past, a lost fortune, the heartache of "perdition." When asked what skills he can offer in this remote Montana town, Morrie claims: "Whist. Identification of birds. A passable reciting voice. . . . Latin declensions. A bit rusty on Greek."

But as luck would have it, the town's joyless school teacher elopes with the preacher, and Morrie is pressed into service. He has no experience in a classroom, but he is a widely educated man with an infinitely curious mind, a good heart and enough enthusiasm to win over the children -- or at least make a spectacle of himself. Even the oldest kids, the thugs in eighth grade who have "a rim of fuzz on the upper lip . . . as if they were starting to grow moss from all their years trapped in the schoolroom," are captivated when Morrie offers explanations that "soar off into full trapeze flight."

To read these delightful chapters about his impromptu lessons on astronomy, weather and ancient history is to feel with renewed intensity the tragedy of the cavernous, regimented testing factories we sentence our children to nowadays. "If only I could bottle it for every teacher under my jurisdiction," Paul thinks, "the fluid passion Morrie put into those class hours."

As the school year progresses, we follow Paul and his siblings through the usual confrontations with older bullies and sassy girls. Most of this is sweet and funny, but sometimes the story touches on the real hardships and cruelties of desperate families living in a remote, unforgiving land.

Doig has been at this for a long time; he's 67 and the author of eight previous novels and three works of nonfiction, including the memoir This House of Sky. You can see the evidence of that experience in his new novel: its gentle pace, its persistent warmth, its complete freedom from cynicism -- and the confidence to take those risks without winking or apologizing. When a voice as pleasurable as his evokes a lost era, somehow it doesn't seem so lost after all.

Reviewed by Ron Charles
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1ST edition (June 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151012377
• ISBN-13: 978-0151012374
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #343,094 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Evocative, poignant and beautifully written!, January 10, 2007

By	Snowbrocade (Santa Barbara, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

The Whistling Season is an homage to a lost way of life, the homesteading prairie farmers and their children who attended a one-room schoolhouse. This story is told from the perspective of Paul, the eldest and most intellectually gifted son of a recently widowed dry-farmer in Montana. Paul is fortunate to have a father who is well-read and supports the life of the mind. Unfortunately Paul is haunted by dreams and nightmares that leave him perpetually exhausted.

Paul's father, Oliver, and his two brothers are devasted by the death of Paul's mother and struggle to keep the household together with the loss of the essential skills of the homemaker. Hiring a housekeeper, Rose, brings not only cleanliness and harmony to the home, but a new schoolteacher to the community. The school teacher is Rose's brother, Morris. Morris' love of learning and theatrical style inspire the children in the tiny schoolhouse. Ultimately the story turns on how these newcomers fit into and transform this little community.

The strengths of this novel are in its vivid portrayal of prairie life, elegant language and poignant plot. Definitely a novel that leaves me wanting to read more of this author!

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Warmth in Montana, September 5, 2006

By	Richard A. Mitchell "Rick Mitchell" (candia, new hampshire United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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 teenage boy, it is not a coming of age novel. Although there is shadowing of mystery from the beginning, it is not mystery.

So what is it? It is an ode to the single room school house and education. It is a frank telling of a family's year on the Montana frontier. There are relationships explored between the boy and his family, the teacher, the housekeeper and his school mates - friend and foe.

Paul, the narrator, has to face adversity (beyond the death of his mother) in several different ways while maintaining his place in his small and insular world. His most difficult task, however, is to decide what to do with a secret he learns.

The writing is terrific, although the book got off to a slow start. After the first 70 pages, which seemed choppy, I was worried I had picked a dud. From there on the book was captivating. Paul, and almost all of the characters, were extremely likeable with all their foibles and weaknesses exposed. The one pure "bad" guy was tangential and truly wicked.

This is a great read once it started to get going. Both the story(ies) and the characters (especially Morrie, the reluctant teacher) will stay with the reader. It is entertaining and thought-provoking. Highly recommended.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A loving lament for a lost era--rough, wild, gentle, wise, June 7, 2007

By	B. Case "InquiringMind" (Redondo Beach, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Whistling Season (Paperback)

"Whistling Season" by Ivan Doig is a deeply affecting coming-of-age novel set in the dry Montana prairie of 1910. The story is told through the memories of Paul Milliron looking back to one important year in his childhood, when he was 13. The book begins in 1950 when Paul, now Montana State Superintendent of Public Instruction, travels to his hometown of Marias Coulee with the unpleasant task of closing its one and only one-room schoolhouse. He gazes up at the night sky watching Sputnik blink across the stars and knows that a new era has arrived. He is heartbroken because this new era will wipe out all that has come before. There will be no going back.

Doig knows this territory well--it is his own ancestral roots. He has researched it thoroughly and published other successful fiction and nonfiction books set in this period and place. While reading this book, I felt transported back in time--the landscape, the people, the very dust that covered everything--came alive on the page. So do the characters--the singular, bizarre, and clarion-clear characters of the Old West--Doig is, indeed, a master at creating wonderfully authentic people that you really care about.

The story is poignant. Young Paul and his two younger brothers are experiencing the first year of grief following the death of their mother. Oliver Milliron, their father, is understandably overwhelmed with the task of being father, mother, and homesteader. Through the distant Minneapolis newspaper, he sees an ad by a housekeeper. In this manner, the ever-whistling, beautiful Rose Llewellyn comes into their life. She arrives unexpectedly with her brother, Morris Morgan, an eccentric, walking encyclopedia. Events unfold that push Morris toward becoming the town's schoolmaster. Although he has never done anything like that before, teaching seems a task that he was born to. His students flourish under his idiosyncratic and outrageous style. But Rose and Morris hold a secret that Paul eventually uncovers. How he handles that situation delineates young Paul's crossover from child to adult.

The novel is in every way, a loving lament about the passing of uniquely American way of life--the rough, yet magical and free life of Western Montana dry-land farming homesteaders.