Customer Reviews

The Whistling Season

5 star:		(61)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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!

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.

"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.

The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig is a beautiful novel, with rich and delicious prose, and characters that are detailed, complex and fully developed. I dreaded reaching the final page, wanting to spend more time with Paul Milliron, his family, Rose, Morris, and the community.

Paul Milliron is the Montana state superintendent of schools in the 1950s. It is his job to determine the fate of the few rural schools that are still in use. As he returns to his home, he reminisces about the year 1909, when he was thirteen and attended a one-room school in Marias Coulee.

In 1909 Paul's father, recently widowed and caring for his three sons, hires a housekeeper from Minnesota. The housekeeper's ad in the Westwater Gazette read, Can't Cook But Doesn't Bite.

The housekeeper, Rose Llewellyn, arrives in Montana with her brother, Morris. She's already received several months advance on her salary and immediately begins to organize the Milliron's home and quietly insert herself in their lives. But as she said in her ad, she doesn't cook.

When the local schoolteacher leaves to marry an evangelist, Morris accepts, for the rest of the school year, her job. His arrival impacts the Milliron children and their schoolmate's education in ways no one expected.

I expected Rose to be the focal point of the novel, but in many ways, Morris' personality took center stage. His relationship with Paul continually broadened the young man's life and education. There are several interesting twists and turns that were unexpected and contributed to the charm of Doig's novel.

Armchair Interviews says: The Whistling Season is a wonderful and satisfying read.

This is my first Ivan Doig novel, and I wasn't disappointed. The author delivers with uncluttered, straightforward diction the story of a widower and his three sons living at the turn of 1909-10 in eastern Montana. They answer an ad for a housekeeper (Rose) from Minnesota and get more than they bargained for (in many ways, as the denouement will reveal) when Rose's brother, Morrie, steps off the train with her.

"The Whistling Season" suffers only two profanities in its 345-page narrative and is truly family fare in its poignant re-creation of the one-room schoolhouse culture of so many western yesteryears. Although the protagonist is the adult eldest son, Paul Milliron, looking back on his eventful 13th year, it is Morrie Morgan, destined to become the emergency teacher, who steals the show characterization-wise. Morrie makes the book especially appealing to readers who like to read about gifted teachers, schools, and learning -- specifically Morrie's specialties: science, Latin, and subterfuge. Though the plot is as steady and uneventful as Montana's gunmetal skies, the ending does feature a twist (for any O. Henry fans in the crowd). Also of note is Doig's care with description of the land. The landscapes he fondly paints, obviously informed by experience, are a strong competition for Morrie as they become like ghostly characters forged from the anvil of the author's -- and by extension, the narrator's -- memory.

All in all, "The Whistling Season" is a good, solid book about good, solid people, some of whom are burdened by a secret.

With the passing some years ago of Wallace Stegner, Ivan Doig is probably the writer who now most personifies the West. English Creek, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, and Ride with me Mariah Montana are among my favorites. It was with great enthusiasm that I began to read his latest, The Whistling Season. It was for that reason, perhaps, that I was initially disappointed. It had the tone of a juvenile book, at first. There's nothing wrong with that--I write juvenile fiction myself. But this seemed just a note off from where it belonged.

True, the book is about a juvenile, through his reminiscence 50 years hence. There was something that did not ring true. I don't know if I got over it, or if the book improved. More likely I was picking something up in the audio narration that wasn't just right.

Ultimately, the book is not a disappointment, though not his best work. Early on you could see the happy ending rolling toward you like a train in the distance: recently widowed farmer with three boys sends for a housekeeper on the basis of a cryptic ad. Surprise, surprise, she's quite good looking. The real surprise is that she brings her brother with her. He turns out to be much more than we expect, and in many ways is the center of the book.

Much of the novel takes place in a one-room Montana schoolhouse, beginning in 1909. There are several sub-plots that provide the action. The real story is about the kind of education one could get in that kind of setting. A couple of years ago I was privileged to have the opportunity to edit the history of a similar school in Idaho. That kind of grade-spanning education, all but lost today, had much to recommend it.

There is some entertaining wordplay throughout the novel. We come dangerously close to learning a little Latin. In the end, the entire book turns on the definition of a word. A bold step that a lesser writer might not have pulled off. Doig does it with ease.

It's 1957, and Paul Milliron, Montana's Superintendent of Schools, finds himself forced by the legislature to close the state's remaining one-room schools. On the way to perform his task, Paul takes a trip back to 1909, when he attended a rural, one-room school like the ones he must now close, and he relives a school year that shaped his life. We get to know his family, consisting of his widower father and his two younger brothers, plus an eclectic array of classmates, all brought to life by the author's masterful descriptions. When Paul's father hires a housekeeper from a newspaper ad, she comes with a surprise, and the action really begins.

Sure, some of the events are pretty predictable, but all are delightfully so. Doig wraps it up with some deft twists to the predictable, however, as Paul shows a somewhat different side of his character in dealing with the dilemmas of both the past and present.

The reader is left wanting to know more about what happened to Paul's brothers and classmates. But Doig does not clutter the story with that information, leaving it for our imaginations--or perhaps another trilogy as good as his English Creek, Dancing at the Rascal Fair and Ride with Me, Mariah Montana series.

Wonderful reading and inspirational as well.

The problem with reading Ivan Doig is that I can read his books faster than he can write them. I never want the book to end because I know that my trip to the bookstore will be a let down as I decide what to read next. I've read all the other authors that are described as Doig-like: Haruf, Enger, Proulx, West, and a few others. They're all good authors in their own right, but they are not Ivan Doig. I'll admit that I'm a bit biased given the fact that I was born in Montana and have spent many vacations in my last 48 years breathing the pure air of Big Sky country. That emotional connection notwithstanding, Doig is a masterful author. His prose is meaty and strong; his phrasing is creative and memorable (though not 'cute'), and his characters are well-developed, believable, and for the most part, endearing. Particularly enjoyable characters in the book are narrator, Paul; teacher Morrie; and the lovely housekeeper, Rose.

This book is so well crafted that once finished I went back and read several passages at length that were brick work (unbeknown at the time) that eventually shaped the book into being more than merely a 'good read,' but real literature.

This is a keeper. You really can't go wrong with it. I don't know if Doig would ever allow his books to be movies, but the right director would have a smash hit motion picture with this book. It is the one book of his (I believe) that would really lend itself to a great film.

Happy reading.

This is the fourth Doig book I've read and I never fail to be impressed. As a long-time teacher I've read hundreds of books that sometimes blur together, but I can absolutely remember every one of Doig's. Like Wallace Stegner, Doig has a way of evoking a time and place (the West) that is accurate while being truly lyrical and memorable. What I like about Doig is that you can "see" it all just so clearly. If you have an interest in life for some at the turn of the century, this book is for you. If you ever wondered about rural education and how the teacher coped, this book is for you. If you like hisorical fiction that is one hundered percent accurate while telling a good story, this book is for you. Ultimately, if you like quality writing that is worth reading in and of itself, this is time well spent. You will find yourself wanting to read other Doig novels. Like me, I know you will find them truly satisfying.

I was fortunate to see Ivan Doig at a book reading for Whistling Season. Certainly he draws upon his real life experience at a one room school and with a father widowed with young children. However, I think that in this new book, he goes beyond his real life experience (at least as described in his biographies, House of Sky and Heart Earth) to create a fictional environment. This new tack is, in my opinion, a good one, and I found this a very enjoyable book.