45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great story of early-20th-century Montana, May 25, 2010
This review is from: Work Song (Hardcover)
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Some stories are just stories. Some are tales. This is a yarn. And by that I mean a tale told well, with lots of connecting threads.
Ivan Doig has a masterly hand when it comes to spinning stories about the West. You can feel the grittiness of a mining town, the vast blueness of the skies, the diversity of the people who made up the towns that sometimes came fast and went just as fast. This story takes place in Butte's early days, when those skilled in mining came from every conceivable place - Cornwall, Wales, Italy, Finland, Germany, Ireland - and each group gravitated to their own part of town.
Enter Morris Morgan - the name he adopts for his time in Butte. He is a literary man, trying to lose himself in the miasma of humanity in rough-and-ready Montana (his story continues from an earlier book, in which he's milked the Chicago mob for some money, and really needs to become someone else, somewhere else). He lands in Butte sans luggage, which was sent somewhere else; and presents himself at a local boarding house with only satchel in hand. Initially suspicious, the landlady eventually accepts him into her home, populated by herself and two retired miners, and Morgan sets about getting gainful employment.
His adventures bring him to both an undertaker in need of assistance and a library, into which he is lured by his love of books - and into the employment thereafter of the larger-than-life curator of the library, Sandy Sandison, a former rancher who seems to have absorbed the town library by brute force, but whose personal collection is beyond compare. He sees something in Morgan that he approves of, and so Morgan finds a home at the library.
Butte, however, is not without its troubles; it is basically under the strong control of the Anaconda Mine, and Anaconda is constantly at odds with the union. Morgan follows the comings and goings at the mine with a journalist's eye, while at the same time attracting the unwelcome attention of a pair of thugs in the employ of the mine who think he is an agitator. The story revolves around the growing tensions between the miners and the owners, and Morgan becomes an integral part of the labor movement in ways he accepts reluctantly.
This book sweeps you along with the power of a great writer. The allusions to Morgan's prior life only add spice to his existence in Butte, and weaves the yarn further along, fleshing out the characters and creating some of the most memorable and outrageous protagonists I've read in this genre of fiction. Morgan's employer, Sandy Sandison, and his equally redoubtable wife Dora, come across as a couple not to be trifled with; the two retired miners at Morgan's boarding house, Griff and Hoop, seem joined at the hip; the landlady herself, a widow named Grace, manages by sheer will not to be pushed around by the mine owners, who want her land; and a former student of Morgan's shows up, with her union-organizer fiance, full of liberal-woman verve and ready to take on anybody politically.
I was introduced to Ivan Doig by a friend a few years ago, and for good Western fiction post-1890s, he is unsurpassed. You can certainly see the landscape he paints with words, and hear the voices of his characters. I look forward to his next work.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poetic Writing of the Working Class Joe, May 22, 2010
This review is from: Work Song (Hardcover)
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Morgan Morris, once a teacher in a one room school house in Marias Coulee, Montana,("The Whistling Season")moves on to the wild recesses of Butte, Montana, copper capital of the world. Post WWI Butte is scene of depravity and desire. Gambling halls, entire streets of prostitution, and speakeasies that scream attract the hard driving miners to their respites. Fighting the crooked companies through their unions take most of these workman's souls and these wild streets are their fortifications.
Morrie is a man of words, the prairie poet, the intellectual who takes up residence in a quiet boarding house owned by Grace, working in the town's library. However, he cannot blind himself to the violence and foreshadowing of even more to come. Meeting a former student of his and her Union husband catapults Morris right into the flames that threaten to bring Butte burning to the ground.
Ivan Doig is a poet. A writer that can evoke emotions, sights, tempers, images, and conversation with the magic of his pen. Incredible wordsmith, he transport you back into Butte's heyday with the smell of cabbage in one neighborhood and marinara sauce in another. He unites you with the clash of angered hungry men against the cold, ruthless greed of mine companies. Flowing with beautiful English, he shares an ugly story that demands your attention and understanding.
In my reader's opinion, Ivan Doig is pure genius. If you long for a fantastic story that is written with eloquent, descriptive, thought-provoking prose, then treat yourself. The pages of perfection are there gifted by a man who was born to write.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Doig's new cast of quirky characters will delight!, May 22, 2010
This review is from: Work Song (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Doig's genius is character development, particularly quirky characters. That statement might be the kiss-of-death for some readers, but only if they haven't been introduced to Doig. Getting to know the men, women, and perhaps especially the children, who populate his stories is as much fun as reading a fast-action thriller.
In Work Song, Doig plucks a secondary character, the mysterious teacher Morrie Morgan, from an earlier novel and sends him on an adventure of his own with only a passing reference to his back story. Morgan, escaping an unseemly former life, has landed in Butte, Montana. In no time at all, he becomes entangled in the lives of his landlady, the local union organizer, a skinny little kid who can run like the wind, and the town's gruff and fearsome librarian.
Doig's writing is masterful and I found myself transported to Butte with absolutely no effort on my part except to open the book and start to read.
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