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Two Medicine Country #7
Una temporada per xiular
«No cuina, però tampoc mossega.» Aquestes paraules encapçalaven l’anunci amb què la Rose Llewellyn, una vídua de «bons costums i disposició excepcional», s’oferia la tardor de 1909 com a majordoma. Inevitablement, la frase va cridar l’atenció de l’Oliver Milliron, un vidu amb tres fills i poca traça per a les feines de la llar, que no va dubtar ni un segon a contractar-la perquè posés una mica d’ordre a casa seva, a Marias Coulee, en un racó isolat de Montana. Va ser així com la Rose i el seu germà Morris, tot un dandi sempre impecable, van arribar a aquest poble de grangers. Per acabar-ho d’arrodonir, quan per aquelles dates la mestra de l’escola va decidir escapar-se amb un predicador itinerant, en Morris es va veure obligat a substituir-la, perquè de fet era l’únic del poble que estava remotament capacitat per fer-ho. Sigui com sigui, els seus enginyosos mètodes d’ensenyament marcarien per sempre els joves alumnes d’aquesta escola rural, i ni ells ni la família Milliron i el poble de Marias Coulee tornaran a ser com eren abans de l’arribada de la Rose i en Morris. Ivan Doig és un dels darrers cronistes de l’Amèrica rural, i Una temporada per xiular és la millor evocació d’una forma de vida desapareguda i dels individus excepcionals que la van fer possible.
400 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2006
1440 people are currently reading
12351 people want to read
About the author
Ivan Doig
38 books782 followersIvan Doig was born in White Sulphur Springs, Montana to a family of homesteaders and ranch hands. After the death of his mother Berneta, on his sixth birthday, he was raised by his father Charles "Charlie" Doig and his grandmother Elizabeth "Bessie" Ringer. After several stints on ranches, they moved to Dupuyer, Pondera County, Montana in the north to herd sheep close to the Rocky Mountain Front.
After his graduation from Valier high school, Doig attended Northwestern University, where he received a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in journalism. He later earned a Ph.D. in American history at the University of Washington, writing his dissertation about John J. McGilvra (1827-1903). He lived with his wife Carol Doig, née Muller, a university professor of English, in Seattle, Washington.
Before Ivan Doig became a novelist, he wrote for newspapers and magazines as a free-lancer and worked for the United States Forest Service.
Much of his fiction is set in the Montana country of his youth. His major theme is family life in the past, mixing personal memory and regional history. As the western landscape and people play an important role in his fiction, he has been hailed as the new dean of western literature, a worthy successor to Wallace Stegner.
Bibliography
His works includes both fictional and non-fictional writings. They can be divided into four groups:
Early Works
News: A Consumer's Guide (1972) - a media textbook coauthored by Carol Doig
Streets We Have Come Down: Literature of the City (1975) - an anthology edited by Ivan Doig
Utopian America: Dreams and Realities (1976) - an anthology edited by Ivan Doig
Autobiographical Books
This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind (1979) - memoirs based on the author's life with his father and grandmother (nominated for National Book Award)
Heart Earth (1993) - memoirs based on his mother's letters to her brother Wally
Regional Works
Winter Brothers: A Season at the Edge of America (1980) - an essayistic dialog with James G. Swan
The Sea Runners (1982) - an adventure novel about four Swedes escaping from New Archangel, today's Sitka, Alaska
Historical Novels
English Creek (1984)
Dancing at the Rascal Fair (1987)
Ride with Me, Mariah Montana (1990)
Bucking the Sun: A Novel (1996)
Mountain Time: A Novel (1999)
Prairie Nocturne: A Novel (2003)
The Whistling Season: A Novel (2006)
The Eleventh Man: A Novel (2008)
The first three Montana novels form the so-called McCaskill trilogy, covering the first centennial of Montana's statehood from 1889 to 1989.
from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Doig"
After his graduation from Valier high school, Doig attended Northwestern University, where he received a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in journalism. He later earned a Ph.D. in American history at the University of Washington, writing his dissertation about John J. McGilvra (1827-1903). He lived with his wife Carol Doig, née Muller, a university professor of English, in Seattle, Washington.
Before Ivan Doig became a novelist, he wrote for newspapers and magazines as a free-lancer and worked for the United States Forest Service.
Much of his fiction is set in the Montana country of his youth. His major theme is family life in the past, mixing personal memory and regional history. As the western landscape and people play an important role in his fiction, he has been hailed as the new dean of western literature, a worthy successor to Wallace Stegner.
Bibliography
His works includes both fictional and non-fictional writings. They can be divided into four groups:
Early Works
News: A Consumer's Guide (1972) - a media textbook coauthored by Carol Doig
Streets We Have Come Down: Literature of the City (1975) - an anthology edited by Ivan Doig
Utopian America: Dreams and Realities (1976) - an anthology edited by Ivan Doig
Autobiographical Books
This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind (1979) - memoirs based on the author's life with his father and grandmother (nominated for National Book Award)
Heart Earth (1993) - memoirs based on his mother's letters to her brother Wally
Regional Works
Winter Brothers: A Season at the Edge of America (1980) - an essayistic dialog with James G. Swan
The Sea Runners (1982) - an adventure novel about four Swedes escaping from New Archangel, today's Sitka, Alaska
Historical Novels
English Creek (1984)
Dancing at the Rascal Fair (1987)
Ride with Me, Mariah Montana (1990)
Bucking the Sun: A Novel (1996)
Mountain Time: A Novel (1999)
Prairie Nocturne: A Novel (2003)
The Whistling Season: A Novel (2006)
The Eleventh Man: A Novel (2008)
The first three Montana novels form the so-called McCaskill trilogy, covering the first centennial of Montana's statehood from 1889 to 1989.
from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Doig"
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April 13, 2023
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.
Ivan Doig - image from The NY Times
Brothers Paul, Damon and Toby Milliron live with their father, Oliver, on a homestead in Marias Coulee, Montana. Mom had succumbed to a burst appendix, and the house was in dire need of an organizing force. Enter Rose Llewellyn and her brother Morris Morgan, late of Minneapolis. Rose, recently widowed and eager for a new start in a new place, comes to Montana to work as a housekeeper to the Milliron family. The foppish, ultra-urban Morgan tags along. East (of a sort) meets West. Urban meets rural. Intellectual meets physical.
I was reminded of Little House and of a very 1950s/1960s family entertainment sensibility. I was half expecting Rose to descend on an umbrella. And the house-maintenance-challenged Oliver would have fit quite nicely into say, Bonanza, or the Donna Reed show.
But the core here is the coming of age of Paul, 13 when we first meet him. He faces some of the usual challenges of young men, a bully in particular. But Rose and Morris light him up like a lantern and he glows like a light in the dark. Morris has a world of knowledge to go along with his impressive moustache. Rose, whose habit of whistling while she works informs the book’s title, has a warmth that emanates as she cleans more than dust from the Milliron home. But there is a secret to Rose and Morris, a bit of shadow on their lightly-explained past.
The story is joyful and warm without becoming too icky-sweet. Doig focuses very much on language, with Paul and Morris as his lenses, and tells a bit about the life of a working farmer in a dry land. Destiny resides as a theme as well, but lightly. Paul is very well drawn, although I would have liked seeing him grappling with the perils of the opposite sex a lot more. I quite enjoyed the book and will dig through the piles of books in our vast stores for more works by Doig.
April 9, 2015 - Ivan Doig passed away. Here is a piece on him from the NY Times
Ivan Doig - image from The NY Times
Brothers Paul, Damon and Toby Milliron live with their father, Oliver, on a homestead in Marias Coulee, Montana. Mom had succumbed to a burst appendix, and the house was in dire need of an organizing force. Enter Rose Llewellyn and her brother Morris Morgan, late of Minneapolis. Rose, recently widowed and eager for a new start in a new place, comes to Montana to work as a housekeeper to the Milliron family. The foppish, ultra-urban Morgan tags along. East (of a sort) meets West. Urban meets rural. Intellectual meets physical.
I was reminded of Little House and of a very 1950s/1960s family entertainment sensibility. I was half expecting Rose to descend on an umbrella. And the house-maintenance-challenged Oliver would have fit quite nicely into say, Bonanza, or the Donna Reed show.
But the core here is the coming of age of Paul, 13 when we first meet him. He faces some of the usual challenges of young men, a bully in particular. But Rose and Morris light him up like a lantern and he glows like a light in the dark. Morris has a world of knowledge to go along with his impressive moustache. Rose, whose habit of whistling while she works informs the book’s title, has a warmth that emanates as she cleans more than dust from the Milliron home. But there is a secret to Rose and Morris, a bit of shadow on their lightly-explained past.
The story is joyful and warm without becoming too icky-sweet. Doig focuses very much on language, with Paul and Morris as his lenses, and tells a bit about the life of a working farmer in a dry land. Destiny resides as a theme as well, but lightly. Paul is very well drawn, although I would have liked seeing him grappling with the perils of the opposite sex a lot more. I quite enjoyed the book and will dig through the piles of books in our vast stores for more works by Doig.
April 9, 2015 - Ivan Doig passed away. Here is a piece on him from the NY Times
January 17, 2018
Right out-of-the-gate: this novel had my toes curling, my smile circling itself right around my head, my hands itching to start writing my thoughts down. My word, dear author, how you got me back into a wholesome zone with your wordsmithery.
Paul Milliron. 1952. There was a fire in the sky. It was the year of the Soviet Union and the Sputnik. The Russians in their kettle of gadgetry has sped past the USA into space. Science will be king, elected by panic.
It was also the year that he as Superintendent of Public Instructions had to make an earth-shattering decision about rural one-room schoolhouses. He remembered 1910 when Halley's comet came to visit as another kind of fire in the sky. The year Mark Twain passed away. He was a thirteen year old school boy at the time in Marias Cooley, Montana. It was the year of Morrie in his life.
1909-1910. Yes, a tinch of good ole' homestead wholesomeness covered the farmlands of the dryland prairie farms below the Montana skies. There was a little bit of a twitch: Morrie Morgan was there - the University of Chicago schollar-cum-chicken house cleaner, melodiously articulating his cultured words. The Thucididian orator who pleaded Paul's case against Father's sense of honor, and he did this with the lilt he tend to give to his most soaring notions.
To Paul, it was like hearing their father meet up with himself. Morrie was lightly built, and an extraordinary amount of him was mustache. It was one of those maximum ones such as I had seen in pictures of Rudyard Kipling, a soup-strainer and a lady-tickler and a fashion show, all in one.
There was father's laugh. Anything funny had to prove it to his nose first. A willing, but dubious cook. Mealtimes were a kind of tribal low point for the Milliron-tribe where this widower and his three sons Paul, Damon, and Toby had to contemplate whatever Father had managed to fight onto the table this time. As part of the tribe there was Houdini the dog, barking so loud he staggered around in circles when he got excited. Their only salvation was aunt Eunice's cooking each Sunday, where chicken drumsticks, the Missouri T-bones, had a place of honor on their plates and palate.
From Manitowoc, Wisconsin, to Marias Coulee in Montana. New territory, new future in farming. But then Mother passed away, leaving Olivier Milliron and his three young boys to fend for themselves. Eventually Father got the idea of a housekeeper when he noticed a want-ad in the Westwater Gazette. The ad claimed:
"By circumlocution," Father said, which I (Paul the narrator) resolved to look up. "I want you boys, "he tapped Damon with the comb, "to tend to your manners over there. It's good practice for when our general domestication happens."
Well, manners was a different ball game at school, where the three Millirons constantly had to endure the teasing about the nonbiting housekeeper. ("Does she come with a muzzle?" "Is she so old she's a gummer?") Paul's only fellow seventh grader, Carnelia Craig, was front in line. She was unfairly deposited among unruly peasants such as the Marias Coulee one-room schoolhouse attendants instead of putting her in charge of Russia. Paul comprehended more of Carnelia's lofty approach to life, jaded as it was, than Paul did of his father's latest castles in the air.
And that is how Rose Llewellyn and Morrie Morgan , a brother and sister team, entered the dialogue. It was the first sign of a new destiny.
In between the human interactions, the pathetic fallacies in nature would from time to time intervene: the wind would practice for winter in October; sometimes the sky would be guiltlessly empty. Even the wind would have nothing to say, for once then. The clouds became moody. The weather would throw a fit.
Nobody saw it coming. The teacher ran off with that preacher, hopped on the train with that sky pilot. Baggy Miss Adelaide Trent have become Sister Jubal.
"Destiny strikes again," Oiver said wearily.
"GOOD MORNING, YOUNG SCHOLARS," the new teacher said. Three dozen of schoolchild ears took a considerable moment to adjust to that form of address, to that new source of articulation at the front of the class...
Somewhere along the way, Chaucer, that book-laden pilgrim to Canterbury sneaked in. Gladly would he learn, and gladly teach, to which Oliver Milliron --post haste to reason and a granary of knowledge... or post partum to hope... or post mortem to the good intentions-- replied But all be that he was a philosopher/Yet had he but gold in coffer."
It was the year when promises were made up down and sideways. A year of new beginnings with words, oh the words, right when the heavens were going to speak in a tongue of fire.
It became a bittersweet satorial journey of a widowed father and his three sons and what happened to make them the men they would become.
I don't want to say much more about the plot. I just want to add that it was one of the most atmospheric, gripping tales I have ever read. What started off as an innocent memory...
That's all I'm giving away.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. This novel was the perfect choice to start my reading year with. I simply fell in love with words. Again. Mix a little bit of Kent Haruf, and a little bit of Willa Cather, a splash of Richard Russo with a barrel full of Ivan Doig, and you're set for inexplicable excellence.
Happy New Year to everyone!
Paul Milliron. 1952. There was a fire in the sky. It was the year of the Soviet Union and the Sputnik. The Russians in their kettle of gadgetry has sped past the USA into space. Science will be king, elected by panic.
It was also the year that he as Superintendent of Public Instructions had to make an earth-shattering decision about rural one-room schoolhouses. He remembered 1910 when Halley's comet came to visit as another kind of fire in the sky. The year Mark Twain passed away. He was a thirteen year old school boy at the time in Marias Cooley, Montana. It was the year of Morrie in his life.
1909-1910. Yes, a tinch of good ole' homestead wholesomeness covered the farmlands of the dryland prairie farms below the Montana skies. There was a little bit of a twitch: Morrie Morgan was there - the University of Chicago schollar-cum-chicken house cleaner, melodiously articulating his cultured words. The Thucididian orator who pleaded Paul's case against Father's sense of honor, and he did this with the lilt he tend to give to his most soaring notions.
To Paul, it was like hearing their father meet up with himself. Morrie was lightly built, and an extraordinary amount of him was mustache. It was one of those maximum ones such as I had seen in pictures of Rudyard Kipling, a soup-strainer and a lady-tickler and a fashion show, all in one.
There was father's laugh. Anything funny had to prove it to his nose first. A willing, but dubious cook. Mealtimes were a kind of tribal low point for the Milliron-tribe where this widower and his three sons Paul, Damon, and Toby had to contemplate whatever Father had managed to fight onto the table this time. As part of the tribe there was Houdini the dog, barking so loud he staggered around in circles when he got excited. Their only salvation was aunt Eunice's cooking each Sunday, where chicken drumsticks, the Missouri T-bones, had a place of honor on their plates and palate.
From Manitowoc, Wisconsin, to Marias Coulee in Montana. New territory, new future in farming. But then Mother passed away, leaving Olivier Milliron and his three young boys to fend for themselves. Eventually Father got the idea of a housekeeper when he noticed a want-ad in the Westwater Gazette. The ad claimed:
Can't Cook But Doesn't BiteFather said: "Paul, get out your pen. We have to draft a surrender."
"By circumlocution," Father said, which I (Paul the narrator) resolved to look up. "I want you boys, "he tapped Damon with the comb, "to tend to your manners over there. It's good practice for when our general domestication happens."
Well, manners was a different ball game at school, where the three Millirons constantly had to endure the teasing about the nonbiting housekeeper. ("Does she come with a muzzle?" "Is she so old she's a gummer?") Paul's only fellow seventh grader, Carnelia Craig, was front in line. She was unfairly deposited among unruly peasants such as the Marias Coulee one-room schoolhouse attendants instead of putting her in charge of Russia. Paul comprehended more of Carnelia's lofty approach to life, jaded as it was, than Paul did of his father's latest castles in the air.
And that is how Rose Llewellyn and Morrie Morgan , a brother and sister team, entered the dialogue. It was the first sign of a new destiny.
In between the human interactions, the pathetic fallacies in nature would from time to time intervene: the wind would practice for winter in October; sometimes the sky would be guiltlessly empty. Even the wind would have nothing to say, for once then. The clouds became moody. The weather would throw a fit.
Nobody saw it coming. The teacher ran off with that preacher, hopped on the train with that sky pilot. Baggy Miss Adelaide Trent have become Sister Jubal.
"Destiny strikes again," Oiver said wearily.
"GOOD MORNING, YOUNG SCHOLARS," the new teacher said. Three dozen of schoolchild ears took a considerable moment to adjust to that form of address, to that new source of articulation at the front of the class...
Somewhere along the way, Chaucer, that book-laden pilgrim to Canterbury sneaked in. Gladly would he learn, and gladly teach, to which Oliver Milliron --post haste to reason and a granary of knowledge... or post partum to hope... or post mortem to the good intentions-- replied But all be that he was a philosopher/Yet had he but gold in coffer."
It was the year when promises were made up down and sideways. A year of new beginnings with words, oh the words, right when the heavens were going to speak in a tongue of fire.
It became a bittersweet satorial journey of a widowed father and his three sons and what happened to make them the men they would become.
I don't want to say much more about the plot. I just want to add that it was one of the most atmospheric, gripping tales I have ever read. What started off as an innocent memory...
That's all I'm giving away.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. This novel was the perfect choice to start my reading year with. I simply fell in love with words. Again. Mix a little bit of Kent Haruf, and a little bit of Willa Cather, a splash of Richard Russo with a barrel full of Ivan Doig, and you're set for inexplicable excellence.
Happy New Year to everyone!
January 9, 2011
This was my first Ivan Doig, and it was 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. I loved Toby, with his sweet innocence and optimism; mischievous and resourceful Damon; scholarly Paul and his obsession with Latin; and the industrious, kindhearted Rose. My favorite character may just be Rose's brother Morris. At first he comes across as a bit of a dandy and a bumbler, but turns out to be a formidable teacher who can rise to any challenge. His scholarly manner of speaking just tickled me no end. And then of course, there's the father Oliver. He's the one solid, stable figure in the story, keeping it together for his three motherless boys.
The Whistling Season is a love story in every way. It's about love of family, love of learning, love of nature and the changing seasons, and especially, love of good old-fashioned humor.
The characters in The Whistling Season just pop right off the page. I miss them already. I loved Toby, with his sweet innocence and optimism; mischievous and resourceful Damon; scholarly Paul and his obsession with Latin; and the industrious, kindhearted Rose. My favorite character may just be Rose's brother Morris. At first he comes across as a bit of a dandy and a bumbler, but turns out to be a formidable teacher who can rise to any challenge. His scholarly manner of speaking just tickled me no end. And then of course, there's the father Oliver. He's the one solid, stable figure in the story, keeping it together for his three motherless boys.
The Whistling Season is a love story in every way. It's about love of family, love of learning, love of nature and the changing seasons, and especially, love of good old-fashioned humor.
July 2, 2007
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 and complex, and, like Case Histories’s Olivia Land there is a portrait of affectionate, innocent childhood in sweet Toby Milliron.
This book about the one room schoolhouse is so much more.
The Whistling Season is a lovely book of this kind of unapologetic simplicity: the issues are of character and growth, the characters are quirky and complex, and, like Case Histories’s Olivia Land there is a portrait of affectionate, innocent childhood in sweet Toby Milliron.
This book about the one room schoolhouse is so much more.
July 29, 2018
After you reach an age where you have enough history to look back on as an elder to your young self, there is a tendency to do so—seeing things from a perspective you could not have known and aware of your limitations at the time. Sometimes my experience doing this is so vivid that I wonder if, in the truth of nonlinear time that physicists posit is real, young me is sensing old me and if this was the whispers I remember hearing as a kid—what I secretly called "my old woman in the sky." Maybe I was really here now talking to me then.
Well, Ivan Doig has written a book that contains both voices—a man in 1957 looking back at his one-room schoolhouse days in Marias Coulee, Montana, 1909 to 1910—and it is absolutely charming, captivating, and seductively warm. In short, I loved it!
First-person storyteller Paul Milliron, in 1957, a school administrator, looks back on his childhood with his widowed father, two younger brothers, and the amazing housekeeper/teacher Rose Llewellyn /Morrie Morgan duo who positively sparkle with iconoclastic character. Paul is a prodigy who loves Latin, remembers all of his dreams, and has "blindsight"—which, even if Doig didn't intend it, allows me my theory about hearing a whispering older version of himself.
Technically the transitions from 1957 to a vivid and present childhood are impeccable. This book is a perfect mix of good storytelling (with a wonderfully unexpected plot twist at the eleventh hour), sweet nostalgia, and intellectual edge. Ah, a full meal!
Well, Ivan Doig has written a book that contains both voices—a man in 1957 looking back at his one-room schoolhouse days in Marias Coulee, Montana, 1909 to 1910—and it is absolutely charming, captivating, and seductively warm. In short, I loved it!
First-person storyteller Paul Milliron, in 1957, a school administrator, looks back on his childhood with his widowed father, two younger brothers, and the amazing housekeeper/teacher Rose Llewellyn /Morrie Morgan duo who positively sparkle with iconoclastic character. Paul is a prodigy who loves Latin, remembers all of his dreams, and has "blindsight"—which, even if Doig didn't intend it, allows me my theory about hearing a whispering older version of himself.
Technically the transitions from 1957 to a vivid and present childhood are impeccable. This book is a perfect mix of good storytelling (with a wonderfully unexpected plot twist at the eleventh hour), sweet nostalgia, and intellectual edge. Ah, a full meal!
March 17, 2018
3,5/5
Aunque me decepcionó el final, la mayor parte del libro lo disfruté un montón. Es una historia sencilla y tranquila sobre un viudo con 3 hijos a principios del siglo XX en Montana, el mundo de la escuela rural es el epicentro de la historia y ese punto nostálgico me conquistó.
Aunque me decepcionó el final, la mayor parte del libro lo disfruté un montón. Es una historia sencilla y tranquila sobre un viudo con 3 hijos a principios del siglo XX en Montana, el mundo de la escuela rural es el epicentro de la historia y ese punto nostálgico me conquistó.
July 7, 2008
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 of us rootless wanderers disconnected from family that we, too, can become a valued part of a community. Halley's comet serves as a symbol of illumination passing beautifully through lives and moving on, both in Mark Twain's 75 years on earth and in the itinerant teacher's one school year in Marias Coulee, Montana. Alternatively, it's a symbol of the persistence of all good things in the universe, because it inexorably returns every 75 years. Sputnik serves as symbol of technology separating communities and the drive to consolidate all the matters of daily life in order to be effective and cheap--as seen here in all of us sharing our delight with reading disembodied over the internet! But, "the universe desires light," and the book's ending holds out hope that the force-of-nature comet will return to triumph over the aritificial satellite. And, if you're on this site, you're probably one of those lovers of language who will recognize your feelings about learning language as a child in Paul's delight in the study of Latin and its connections to English.
November 19, 2018
Oliver Milliron, a homesteader in Montana is raising his three sons by himself since the recent death of his wife. Things are getting a bit messy around the farmhouse so he answers an ad for a housekeeper. Rose Llewellyn brings brightness to their lives as she gets the place sparkling clean. She showed up with her brother, a sharp dresser with a huge vocabulary, who becomes the teacher in the one room schoolhouse.
Paul, the oldest son, is the adult narrator looking back to 1909-1910 when he was a 13 year old. He realizes how important the small schoolhouse was for community spirit as well as education. The story is told with warmth and humor, but does not gloss over the hardships and hard work that the homesteaders faced. Although most of the story is about the everyday lives of the homesteaders, there is a scandalous secret revealed near the end of the book. Ivan Doig's storytelling is so engaging that it kept my interest all through the book.
Paul, the oldest son, is the adult narrator looking back to 1909-1910 when he was a 13 year old. He realizes how important the small schoolhouse was for community spirit as well as education. The story is told with warmth and humor, but does not gloss over the hardships and hard work that the homesteaders faced. Although most of the story is about the everyday lives of the homesteaders, there is a scandalous secret revealed near the end of the book. Ivan Doig's storytelling is so engaging that it kept my interest all through the book.
August 21, 2016
I’m always a little sad to turn the final page of a truly enchanting book such as The Whistling Season. Ivan Doig’s charming brand of storytelling is welcoming and unhurried, perfectly timed to capture moments of poignancy and hilarity. Any author that can make me laugh out loud while I’m reading scores pretty darn high on my scale!
This story chronicles a period in our narrator’s life, super-smart twelve year old Paul Milliron, during which he’s forced to grow up a little faster than he would have liked. The story of Paul, his father, brothers, Rose, and Morrie will be with me for a while. Doig has a wonderful talent for revealing the human compassion inside each of his characters. It’s particularly evident in the way they come through for and look after one another, no questions asked. Without a doubt, the Milliron family bond is the heart and soul of this book.
One constant in Paul and his brothers’ lives is the one room schoolhouse where they are educated and in which a large portion of the story takes place. I’ve never given much thought to what it would be like to go to a school like that but this book really planted me there, with grades one through eight being taught in one room by one teacher.
“Forever and a day could go by, and that feeling will never leave me. Of knowing, in that instant, the central power of that country school in all our lives.”
Paul’s experiences in the schoolhouse will indeed color his entire life and in later years he'll be in a position to fight to maintain that way of life in the rural parts of the state. It’s the kind of job for an intelligent man with a good heart. That, as you will see if you read this book, is Paul to a tee.
If you enjoy reading stories about genuinely good people and solid relationships, I strongly encourage you to try Ivan Doig. Besides this book, I also recommend Last Bus to Wisdom which, in hindsight, is really a five star book instead of the four I gave it at the time (review here).
This story chronicles a period in our narrator’s life, super-smart twelve year old Paul Milliron, during which he’s forced to grow up a little faster than he would have liked. The story of Paul, his father, brothers, Rose, and Morrie will be with me for a while. Doig has a wonderful talent for revealing the human compassion inside each of his characters. It’s particularly evident in the way they come through for and look after one another, no questions asked. Without a doubt, the Milliron family bond is the heart and soul of this book.
One constant in Paul and his brothers’ lives is the one room schoolhouse where they are educated and in which a large portion of the story takes place. I’ve never given much thought to what it would be like to go to a school like that but this book really planted me there, with grades one through eight being taught in one room by one teacher.
“Forever and a day could go by, and that feeling will never leave me. Of knowing, in that instant, the central power of that country school in all our lives.”
Paul’s experiences in the schoolhouse will indeed color his entire life and in later years he'll be in a position to fight to maintain that way of life in the rural parts of the state. It’s the kind of job for an intelligent man with a good heart. That, as you will see if you read this book, is Paul to a tee.
If you enjoy reading stories about genuinely good people and solid relationships, I strongly encourage you to try Ivan Doig. Besides this book, I also recommend Last Bus to Wisdom which, in hindsight, is really a five star book instead of the four I gave it at the time (review here).
April 18, 2018
3,5-4*
En esta entrañable historia, Paul nos cuenta su infancia junto a sus hermanos viviendo en las solitarias y áridas tierras del Lejano Oeste (concretamente Montana) de principios del siglo XX.
Aunque el desenlace me ha parecido un pelín forzado y con algunos detalles que no creo que fueran necesarios y otros un poco desaprovechados, la historia y sus personajes me han gustado mucho, así como la acérrima defensa que hace de las escuelas de zonas rurales.
Una historia entrañable, tierna y divertida.
En esta entrañable historia, Paul nos cuenta su infancia junto a sus hermanos viviendo en las solitarias y áridas tierras del Lejano Oeste (concretamente Montana) de principios del siglo XX.
Aunque el desenlace me ha parecido un pelín forzado y con algunos detalles que no creo que fueran necesarios y otros un poco desaprovechados, la historia y sus personajes me han gustado mucho, así como la acérrima defensa que hace de las escuelas de zonas rurales.
Una historia entrañable, tierna y divertida.
November 7, 2008
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.
March 16, 2016
I was charmed by this book when I first started reading it. Something about the story and the nostalgic narrative reminded me a little of To Kill a Mockingbird. But unlike that classic, this book didn't have the depth or a focal point such as the racial inequality in a Southern town and the resulting injustices. Instead, this book had a middle-aged narrator looking back to his childhood in Montana during 1909, in a warm-hearted story about a widowed father and his three sons doing their best to carry on after losing the mother a year earlier. The emphasis was on their family and the trials and tribulations of growing up in that place during that time when dry farming and a one room schoolhouse were challenging enough without missing a beloved wife and mother.
The family had just reached a delicate balance in their lives when something happened that changed everything. The father, Oliver, saw an ad for a housekeeper who claimed she didn't cook, but wouldn't bite. Intrigued and needing help, Oliver answered the ad, and next thing he knew, the new housekeeper, Rose, had arrived from across the country, unexpectedly bringing along her brother, Morrie, a highly educated man, curiously content to do manual labor. As hoped, Rose whipped the neglected house into order, a regular dust buster if not a cook, much to Oliver's delight, but dismay where his stomach was concerned. And much to the sons' dismay, gossip and teasing became rampant in the schoolhouse, concerning the housekeeper, a widow, spending so much time in their widowed father's home. Then everyone had bigger things to gossip about when the teacher ran off with the traveling preacher and a replacement needed to be found before the school was forced to close. Rose's brother, Morrie, was thrust into the position to either sink or swim. Nobody could have predicted all that would happen next in that one room schoolhouse which held the hopes of the next generation in grades one through eight.
Maybe this was all very exciting for Oliver and his thirteen year old son Paul, the book's narrator, as well as for Paul's younger brothers, Damon and Toby. But for this reader, while I was charmed by all the characters and was rooting for them, and while I enjoyed the closeness of their family which I envied, I was also a little impatient with this even keeled story. It wasn't until the very end that anything out of the ordinary happened. Which isn't to say I didn't enjoy reading about this family. But I needed something more dramatic or climactic to happen along the way than this running account of those months during their life. And except for an aunt and a bully with an even bigger bully for a father, everyone was so darn nice, if flawed. I hate to complain about this since I'm always complaining about books with unlikable main characters, but I guess I prefer something between the two extremes, especially in the absence of dramatic turns in the story.
Still, this book kept me interested enough throughout and, despite my complaints about it, I looked forward to picking it up to find out what would happen next. And while this was a family drama with plenty of humor, at its core, it was a love letter to one room schoolhouses and a plea against their impending extinction, making it something worth thinking about. It's the first book in a trilogy which surprisingly veers off to focus on Morrie in the next two books, not Paul as he grew up, as I supposed it would.
Recommended for readers who enjoy comfortable family dramas laced with humor and nostalgia, and those looking for a respite from nasty characters you wouldn't want to meet in real life.
The family had just reached a delicate balance in their lives when something happened that changed everything. The father, Oliver, saw an ad for a housekeeper who claimed she didn't cook, but wouldn't bite. Intrigued and needing help, Oliver answered the ad, and next thing he knew, the new housekeeper, Rose, had arrived from across the country, unexpectedly bringing along her brother, Morrie, a highly educated man, curiously content to do manual labor. As hoped, Rose whipped the neglected house into order, a regular dust buster if not a cook, much to Oliver's delight, but dismay where his stomach was concerned. And much to the sons' dismay, gossip and teasing became rampant in the schoolhouse, concerning the housekeeper, a widow, spending so much time in their widowed father's home. Then everyone had bigger things to gossip about when the teacher ran off with the traveling preacher and a replacement needed to be found before the school was forced to close. Rose's brother, Morrie, was thrust into the position to either sink or swim. Nobody could have predicted all that would happen next in that one room schoolhouse which held the hopes of the next generation in grades one through eight.
Maybe this was all very exciting for Oliver and his thirteen year old son Paul, the book's narrator, as well as for Paul's younger brothers, Damon and Toby. But for this reader, while I was charmed by all the characters and was rooting for them, and while I enjoyed the closeness of their family which I envied, I was also a little impatient with this even keeled story. It wasn't until the very end that anything out of the ordinary happened. Which isn't to say I didn't enjoy reading about this family. But I needed something more dramatic or climactic to happen along the way than this running account of those months during their life. And except for an aunt and a bully with an even bigger bully for a father, everyone was so darn nice, if flawed. I hate to complain about this since I'm always complaining about books with unlikable main characters, but I guess I prefer something between the two extremes, especially in the absence of dramatic turns in the story.
Still, this book kept me interested enough throughout and, despite my complaints about it, I looked forward to picking it up to find out what would happen next. And while this was a family drama with plenty of humor, at its core, it was a love letter to one room schoolhouses and a plea against their impending extinction, making it something worth thinking about. It's the first book in a trilogy which surprisingly veers off to focus on Morrie in the next two books, not Paul as he grew up, as I supposed it would.
Recommended for readers who enjoy comfortable family dramas laced with humor and nostalgia, and those looking for a respite from nasty characters you wouldn't want to meet in real life.
July 1, 2024
Hay libros que son como la primera vez que llegas a un lugar nuevo. En un principio todo resulta desconocido y cuesta acostumbrarse al entorno y a sus habitantes. Pero después llega un momento en que te conviertes en uno más del lugar y es como si siempre hubieses estado ahí. ‘Una temporada para silbar’ es uno de estos libros. Empiezas su lectura como si fuese un libro más, del que sí, esperas mucho pero no estás seguro, comienzas con titubeos conociendo a los personajes y sus historias, y cuando estás metido de lleno en la novela, ya sabes que estás ante un libro especial, algo que se convierte en una certeza absoluta cuando la terminas y te sorprendes echando de menos a los protagonistas.
‘Una temporada para silbar’ está narrada por Paul Milliron, superintendente escolar, que en los años 50 ha de notificar el desmantelamiento de las escuelas unitarias para dar paso a los grandes centros escolares. Será entonces cuando Paul comience a rememorar unos hechos que acaecieron en 1909, y que le dejaron una profunda huella.
Corría el año 1909 en Marias Coulee, una pequeña población rural de Montana. Paul, de 13 años, vive en la granja con su padre y sus dos hermanos pequeños, Damon y Toby. Su madre hace un año que ha fallecido, y ante el duro trabajo que supone encargarse de las tareas de la casa, de sus tres hijos y de los trabajos en el campo, su padre decide responder al curioso anuncio en el periódico de una mujer que se ofrece como ama de llaves que ”No cocina, pero tampoco muerde”. Cuál no será la sorpresa de los cuatro miembros de esta familia cuando reciban la llegada de Rose, pero no sola, sino acompañada de su hermano Morrie. La vida a partir de este momento para Paul y su familia dará un vuelco sorprendente.
Vistos desde las distancia, los recuerdos de Paul tienen una pátina de nostalgia, que el autor, Ivan Doig, transmite de una manera apasionada y tierna al mismo tiempo, no exenta de un cierto sentido del humor, proporcionándonos momentos memorables, como las carreras de los chicos a caballo, porque van al colegio montados a caballo; las relaciones de los hermanos con sus compañeros de escuela; la visión que de la época se tenía de las cosechas y la meteorología; la relación tan especial que se establece entre Paul y Rose, o entre Paul y Morrie.
Tras leer ‘Una temporada para silbar’, inevitablemente me vienen a la mente ‘La comedia humana’, de William Saroyan, y ‘Vinieron como golondrinas’, de William Maxwell, que comparten esa impresión casi mítica de una época pasada, vista por unos ojos inocentes.
Sin lugar a dudas, Ivan Doig, con un estilo ameno y aparentemente sencillo, ha escrito una de esas novelas que perduran en el recuerdo.
‘Una temporada para silbar’ está narrada por Paul Milliron, superintendente escolar, que en los años 50 ha de notificar el desmantelamiento de las escuelas unitarias para dar paso a los grandes centros escolares. Será entonces cuando Paul comience a rememorar unos hechos que acaecieron en 1909, y que le dejaron una profunda huella.
Corría el año 1909 en Marias Coulee, una pequeña población rural de Montana. Paul, de 13 años, vive en la granja con su padre y sus dos hermanos pequeños, Damon y Toby. Su madre hace un año que ha fallecido, y ante el duro trabajo que supone encargarse de las tareas de la casa, de sus tres hijos y de los trabajos en el campo, su padre decide responder al curioso anuncio en el periódico de una mujer que se ofrece como ama de llaves que ”No cocina, pero tampoco muerde”. Cuál no será la sorpresa de los cuatro miembros de esta familia cuando reciban la llegada de Rose, pero no sola, sino acompañada de su hermano Morrie. La vida a partir de este momento para Paul y su familia dará un vuelco sorprendente.
Vistos desde las distancia, los recuerdos de Paul tienen una pátina de nostalgia, que el autor, Ivan Doig, transmite de una manera apasionada y tierna al mismo tiempo, no exenta de un cierto sentido del humor, proporcionándonos momentos memorables, como las carreras de los chicos a caballo, porque van al colegio montados a caballo; las relaciones de los hermanos con sus compañeros de escuela; la visión que de la época se tenía de las cosechas y la meteorología; la relación tan especial que se establece entre Paul y Rose, o entre Paul y Morrie.
Tras leer ‘Una temporada para silbar’, inevitablemente me vienen a la mente ‘La comedia humana’, de William Saroyan, y ‘Vinieron como golondrinas’, de William Maxwell, que comparten esa impresión casi mítica de una época pasada, vista por unos ojos inocentes.
Sin lugar a dudas, Ivan Doig, con un estilo ameno y aparentemente sencillo, ha escrito una de esas novelas que perduran en el recuerdo.
April 10, 2019
Un libro tranquilo y tierno con el que empatizas y disfrutas desde la página uno.
September 4, 2020
Sep 3, 1130am ~~ Stayed up late with this book last night. Review asap after a nap.
Sep 3, 630pm ~~ Another winner from my Ivan Doig collection. This is the first of what GR calls the Morrie Morgan trilogy, and introduces the world to not only Morrie Morgan but narrator Paul Milliron, his two younger brothers Damon and Toby, and their father Oliver.
Mrs. Milliron has been dead for a year now, so the men of the house have been taking care of themselves. But Mr. is not a good cook, and the housekeeping is, to put it politely, somewhat overlooked.
Then they see an ad with this attention grabbing headline Can't cook but doesn't bite. The ad goes on to explain that a certain widow is looking for a housekeeping position. Surely the can't cook part is a joke? Just a way of catching the reader's eye? Well, what better way to find out than to answer the ad and offer this widow a job?
They do, and soon enough Rose LLewellyn arrives on the train with an unexpected bit of luggage: her brother Morrie Morgan. And, as the back cover says, 'life is never again the same in Marias Coulee, Montana'.
Doig created some wonderful characters here. Paul is in the seventh grade at the one room schoolhouse, sharing a desk with Carnelia, the only other seventh grader. What I loved about this story was how the focus became that school room and the many lessons that took place there. I was not expecting that, I thought the book would center around the family farm and the doings of the new housekeeper. She is naturally an important part of the story but her brother Morrie turns out to be the true star here, even overshadowing our Paul now and then.
I could barely put the book down, and although I had semi-guessed at part of the secret about our brother and sister team, I had not figured it all out. The book ends with a one-two punch that took my breath away and made me more than ready to find out what happens next in Work Song, book number two. And after just a few chapters I can already tell it will also be a winner.
Sep 3, 630pm ~~ Another winner from my Ivan Doig collection. This is the first of what GR calls the Morrie Morgan trilogy, and introduces the world to not only Morrie Morgan but narrator Paul Milliron, his two younger brothers Damon and Toby, and their father Oliver.
Mrs. Milliron has been dead for a year now, so the men of the house have been taking care of themselves. But Mr. is not a good cook, and the housekeeping is, to put it politely, somewhat overlooked.
Then they see an ad with this attention grabbing headline Can't cook but doesn't bite. The ad goes on to explain that a certain widow is looking for a housekeeping position. Surely the can't cook part is a joke? Just a way of catching the reader's eye? Well, what better way to find out than to answer the ad and offer this widow a job?
They do, and soon enough Rose LLewellyn arrives on the train with an unexpected bit of luggage: her brother Morrie Morgan. And, as the back cover says, 'life is never again the same in Marias Coulee, Montana'.
Doig created some wonderful characters here. Paul is in the seventh grade at the one room schoolhouse, sharing a desk with Carnelia, the only other seventh grader. What I loved about this story was how the focus became that school room and the many lessons that took place there. I was not expecting that, I thought the book would center around the family farm and the doings of the new housekeeper. She is naturally an important part of the story but her brother Morrie turns out to be the true star here, even overshadowing our Paul now and then.
I could barely put the book down, and although I had semi-guessed at part of the secret about our brother and sister team, I had not figured it all out. The book ends with a one-two punch that took my breath away and made me more than ready to find out what happens next in Work Song, book number two. And after just a few chapters I can already tell it will also be a winner.
May 12, 2025
A Love Song For Marias Coulee
Ivan Doig's 2006 novel "The Whistling Season" portrays a small rural area in Montana in 1909, late in the homesteading period. Settlers came to Montana lured by free land and the promise of a new life. Doig takes a long, affectionate look at people and places. The primary group of homesteaders in his novel are the Millirons consisting of a husband, wife and two sons who migrated from Manitowoc, Wisconsin where Oliver Milliron was a drayman. After settling in Marias Coulee, Oliver continued as a hauler and also became a farmer on dry land and the president of the local school board. The school board supervised a one-room schoolhouse with scholars from the first through the eighth grades. The Millirons had another son before the wife, Florence, died. Oliver and his three sons, Paul, Damon, and Toby, struggled to get by and keep house as males will.
Oliver responds to an ad placed by a woman from Minneapolis offering housekeeping services. This response leads to the second group of homesteaders featured in the story: Rose, a lovely, housekeeper and young widow, and her dapper, mustachioed, and highly educated brother Morrie. Rose is a skilled housekeeper but can't cook. She whistles while she works and sings as well. The stories of the Millirons and the Morgans, Rose and Morrie, intertwine in this book under the course of the stars and of Halley's Comet, frequently under the heading of destiny.
Paul Milliron, the oldest son, narrates the story. In 1909, when the action takes place, Paul is a precocious 13-year old in seventh grade in the Marias Coulee school. He narrates the tale in 1957, age about 61, when he is the Superintendent of the Montana Public Schools, a position he has held for many years. In 1957, the USSR had launched Sputnik. Americans panicked fearing they had fallen behind the Russians in science. The Montana school system was looking toward eliminating the one-room schools of the sort in which Paul had learned in Marias Coulee, on grounds that they did not offer a sufficiently demanding program in science and mathematics.
Paul narrates his tale of family, homesteading, learning, farming, and whistling in a poetic, loving, nostalgic way. Paul was a brilliant child and retains his way with words and thought. He tells his story in a manner that is also orderly, organized, and slowly developing which captures the Millirons' life and the arrival of the Morgans. The story gradually expands to include the other homesteaders in the area, the growth of irrigation farming, as opposed to dry land farming, the forming community, and, perhaps most of all, the school and the early life of the mind. Paul has an understanding of people and their different quirks and characters, and he describes the homesteaders that peopled Montana in indelible detail.
When the teacher at Marias Coulee leaves mid-term to get married, the redoubtable Morrie Morgan is pressed into service as teacher. He is able to inspire most of his young charges, Paul in particular, who becomes a student of Latin. In 1910, Halley's Comet made its appointed appearance, (it is on a 75 year cycle). Morrie teaches his charges many things about the cosmos and about the comet as he and his scholars prepare a program replete with music and stories for the community on the night when the comet is in its full glory. Halley's Comet, with it light, regularity, and spirit of vision and unity of life becomes one of the key symbols in Paul's tale and in this book.
The other key symbol is the Marais Coulee one-room schoolhouse. Paul, in 1957, looks back on his youthful education and recalls how the school and its students managed to do much with little in a single classroom with children of widely different backgrounds and interests in study. The old schoolhouse itself opens up in Paul's mind to the homesteading years and to a love and sense of place for the community, the state and the nation where Paul has spent his life. The book tells the story of love on a personal and communal level.
In 2010, Doig wrote a sequel to this book, the novel "Work Song". It features Morrie, ten years removed from Marias Coulee, living in Butte Montana. The Butte Public Library comes to take a role similar to the role of the humble schoolhouse in "The Whistling Season" in helping the reader understand the American West.
In its obituary for Doig, (1939-2015), the "New York Times" quoted the words of Wright Morris reviewing another book of the author that apply with equal force to "The Whistling Season". Morris wrote: "“Mr. Doig’s story reinforces our diminishing conviction that there is something special in American earth, in American experience and in the harrowing terms of American survival,”
In times of divisiveness in our country and a certain lack of faith in its ideals, it is a tonic to read "The Whistling Season". I am grateful to have found this author.
Robin Friedman
Ivan Doig's 2006 novel "The Whistling Season" portrays a small rural area in Montana in 1909, late in the homesteading period. Settlers came to Montana lured by free land and the promise of a new life. Doig takes a long, affectionate look at people and places. The primary group of homesteaders in his novel are the Millirons consisting of a husband, wife and two sons who migrated from Manitowoc, Wisconsin where Oliver Milliron was a drayman. After settling in Marias Coulee, Oliver continued as a hauler and also became a farmer on dry land and the president of the local school board. The school board supervised a one-room schoolhouse with scholars from the first through the eighth grades. The Millirons had another son before the wife, Florence, died. Oliver and his three sons, Paul, Damon, and Toby, struggled to get by and keep house as males will.
Oliver responds to an ad placed by a woman from Minneapolis offering housekeeping services. This response leads to the second group of homesteaders featured in the story: Rose, a lovely, housekeeper and young widow, and her dapper, mustachioed, and highly educated brother Morrie. Rose is a skilled housekeeper but can't cook. She whistles while she works and sings as well. The stories of the Millirons and the Morgans, Rose and Morrie, intertwine in this book under the course of the stars and of Halley's Comet, frequently under the heading of destiny.
Paul Milliron, the oldest son, narrates the story. In 1909, when the action takes place, Paul is a precocious 13-year old in seventh grade in the Marias Coulee school. He narrates the tale in 1957, age about 61, when he is the Superintendent of the Montana Public Schools, a position he has held for many years. In 1957, the USSR had launched Sputnik. Americans panicked fearing they had fallen behind the Russians in science. The Montana school system was looking toward eliminating the one-room schools of the sort in which Paul had learned in Marias Coulee, on grounds that they did not offer a sufficiently demanding program in science and mathematics.
Paul narrates his tale of family, homesteading, learning, farming, and whistling in a poetic, loving, nostalgic way. Paul was a brilliant child and retains his way with words and thought. He tells his story in a manner that is also orderly, organized, and slowly developing which captures the Millirons' life and the arrival of the Morgans. The story gradually expands to include the other homesteaders in the area, the growth of irrigation farming, as opposed to dry land farming, the forming community, and, perhaps most of all, the school and the early life of the mind. Paul has an understanding of people and their different quirks and characters, and he describes the homesteaders that peopled Montana in indelible detail.
When the teacher at Marias Coulee leaves mid-term to get married, the redoubtable Morrie Morgan is pressed into service as teacher. He is able to inspire most of his young charges, Paul in particular, who becomes a student of Latin. In 1910, Halley's Comet made its appointed appearance, (it is on a 75 year cycle). Morrie teaches his charges many things about the cosmos and about the comet as he and his scholars prepare a program replete with music and stories for the community on the night when the comet is in its full glory. Halley's Comet, with it light, regularity, and spirit of vision and unity of life becomes one of the key symbols in Paul's tale and in this book.
The other key symbol is the Marais Coulee one-room schoolhouse. Paul, in 1957, looks back on his youthful education and recalls how the school and its students managed to do much with little in a single classroom with children of widely different backgrounds and interests in study. The old schoolhouse itself opens up in Paul's mind to the homesteading years and to a love and sense of place for the community, the state and the nation where Paul has spent his life. The book tells the story of love on a personal and communal level.
In 2010, Doig wrote a sequel to this book, the novel "Work Song". It features Morrie, ten years removed from Marias Coulee, living in Butte Montana. The Butte Public Library comes to take a role similar to the role of the humble schoolhouse in "The Whistling Season" in helping the reader understand the American West.
In its obituary for Doig, (1939-2015), the "New York Times" quoted the words of Wright Morris reviewing another book of the author that apply with equal force to "The Whistling Season". Morris wrote: "“Mr. Doig’s story reinforces our diminishing conviction that there is something special in American earth, in American experience and in the harrowing terms of American survival,”
In times of divisiveness in our country and a certain lack of faith in its ideals, it is a tonic to read "The Whistling Season". I am grateful to have found this author.
Robin Friedman
February 19, 2008
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 characters. It reminds me Heartland by Haruf - although their is no central tragedy to pull the characters lives together. There is a rich and quiet humor but I feel he has simplified the story greatly - it is also much like the stories of Fred Chappell (southern) I Am One of You Forever, or Farewll, I'm bound to Leave You - strong stories of place. I need to think on this one some more.
September 13, 2015
Why didn’t I come across Ivan Doig before? This novel is absolutely beautiful, great writing, full of humor and unforgettable characters, this book is going straight to my favorites shelf.
July 13, 2009
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 and humorous books I've ever read.
The story is told as memories of a 1950s era state school superintendent who is recalling his own experiences attending a rural Montana school 40 years earlier. Poignancy is added to the story by it being in the voice of a person who is part of the bureaucracy that is in the process of closing all one-room grade schools in the state. One reason this story resonates with me is that I attended the same one-room rural grade school that my father had attended, and it was the school where my mother had been the teacher for seven years before she was married. With this background I feel I was witness to the end of the era celebrated by this book because all rural school districts were consolidated into larger districts soon after I graduated. The book idealizes the one-room school by having probably the world's best teacher and some very intelligent students in attendance. My own experience attending a one-room school wasn't nearly so interesting or exciting. Nevertheless, I look back on my grade school years with great fondness and in a manner similar to the narrator of this book.
"Childhood is the one story that stands by itself in every soul," is a quote from this book with which I agree. The book's narrative begins, "When I visit the back corners of my life again after so long a time 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.
This author deserves to be more widely known. Where has he been all these years? A long interview with the author is at the following web address:
http://www.harcourtbooks.com/Whistlin...
I was shocked to learn that the author had not attended a one-room grade school himself. Well, after all it is a novel, not a biography, so I'll let that pass.
The story is told as memories of a 1950s era state school superintendent who is recalling his own experiences attending a rural Montana school 40 years earlier. Poignancy is added to the story by it being in the voice of a person who is part of the bureaucracy that is in the process of closing all one-room grade schools in the state. One reason this story resonates with me is that I attended the same one-room rural grade school that my father had attended, and it was the school where my mother had been the teacher for seven years before she was married. With this background I feel I was witness to the end of the era celebrated by this book because all rural school districts were consolidated into larger districts soon after I graduated. The book idealizes the one-room school by having probably the world's best teacher and some very intelligent students in attendance. My own experience attending a one-room school wasn't nearly so interesting or exciting. Nevertheless, I look back on my grade school years with great fondness and in a manner similar to the narrator of this book.
"Childhood is the one story that stands by itself in every soul," is a quote from this book with which I agree. The book's narrative begins, "When I visit the back corners of my life again after so long a time 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.
This author deserves to be more widely known. Where has he been all these years? A long interview with the author is at the following web address:
http://www.harcourtbooks.com/Whistlin...
I was shocked to learn that the author had not attended a one-room grade school himself. Well, after all it is a novel, not a biography, so I'll let that pass.
July 21, 2008
Now I have finsihed the book - so this first paragraph is written after the following paragraph. The plot has a tremendous surprise at the end. All along you know what is going to happen at the end. You do and you don't, because there is a fun twist. And it all holds together. I thought I knew the characters, but in the end when one in particular surprises you, you realize he threw you a looper but his character remains consistent and very believable and real. So an interesting twist ends the book and this keeps you thinking after you finish the book. A very good book, for numerous reasons. On second thoughts I would like to add that the writing style will either appeal to you or not appeal to you. I think this will be a personal thing. I liked it. And I loved Morrie.
I adore the dialogue. This writer can write. For me, the language of a book is very important. I am so sick of Nobel Prize winners that are so HARD to read. Reading a book should always be enjoyable, and it can be even if the subject is difficult. Excellent writing in this book. I usually pick books where I think I will learn something so then at least I have gotten out something if the writing wasn't up to par. I am always so happy when I find just tremendous writing. And I like to chuckle, which I definitely do reading this book.
I adore the dialogue. This writer can write. For me, the language of a book is very important. I am so sick of Nobel Prize winners that are so HARD to read. Reading a book should always be enjoyable, and it can be even if the subject is difficult. Excellent writing in this book. I usually pick books where I think I will learn something so then at least I have gotten out something if the writing wasn't up to par. I am always so happy when I find just tremendous writing. And I like to chuckle, which I definitely do reading this book.
September 13, 2007
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 book--I especially loved the way Ivan Doig captured all the relationships in the book--between the sons and their father, between the boys as brothers and especially between the boys and Rose & Morty. I can't recommend this book enough.
December 18, 2009
In a graduate course a few weeks ago I learned a nifty German word -- bildungsroman -- for the genre of stories about kids going to school and coming of age. Happily, in this review, I can put that word to use: The Whistling Season is a bildungsroman set in rural Montana at the turn of the 20th Century. The narrator is Paul Melliron, the oldest of three sons who have just lost their mother, who retells his story from the future -- from the 1950s, when Sputnik is in orbit and he has gone from student in a one-room schoolhouse to the superintendent over all the state's schools. One of the novel's gimmicks is that Paul, for whatever reason, has vivid and restless dreams that are for him more real than his own memories. Imagine Laura Ingalls Wilder imitating Proust, incongruous as that may be.
This is a book with a documentable personality disorder. I'm not one to enforce classification upon novels, for the best ones transcend genre and stylistic limitations. But more than once while reading Whistling Season I wanted to know just what the hell its point was. Not because the book lacks point, but because it warehouses a plethora of them. Is it a book about homesteaders on the American west in the age of the Industrial Revolution? Is it about the bonds of brotherhood after the death of a parent? Is it an old man's recollection of past events that have made him a successful adult? Is it a tribute to an unorthodox and life-changing teacher? Is it an ode to the heyday of the rural American one-room schoolhouse? Is it a lament for the "simpler" past before life became so complicated by technology? Is it a mystery of hidden pasts and obfuscated identities?
Or is it all these things at once? If so, my question then becomes: Why is it only 350 pages long?
And why, when it's so crammed with history and reflection and political commentary, does the book read so slowly? Why does the author depend upon cheap and episodic mid-book suspense plots like the younger brother's horse accident ("Oh no!" We're supposed to shout. "What if he's crippled?!"), the superintendent's investigation ("Oh no! The teacher is clearly the best the schoolhouse has ever had, but what if the inspector hates him anyway, closes the school down and sends the poor children to different schools where they'll have to ride -- gasp! -- buses?!"), etc. And what's up with the eleventh-hour business about two of the lead characters' hidden pasts? Is that episode, which feels like a short story tacked onto the end, just one more proof that the thirteen-year-old narrator is smarter than anyone else in the book?
Meanwhile, and now let's return a bit to Proust, the author writes in such self-consciously dense prose. My "favorite" examples are the sentences that start the chapters. For your pleasure, I'll type up a couple. Here's the one that starts Chapter Ten: "The Rembrandt light of memory, finicky and magical and faithful at the same time, as the cheaper tiny of nostalgia never is." Not a complete sentence at all, now isn't that cute? And here's from Chapter Seventeen: "Winters were the tree rings of homestead life, circumferences of weather thick or thin, which over time swelled into the abiding pattern of memory." As an undergraduate, I studied under a creative writing teacher who liked to perform "lofty" passages in his airy, mocking "bourgeois" voice. He would have lots of fun with this book.
This is a book with a documentable personality disorder. I'm not one to enforce classification upon novels, for the best ones transcend genre and stylistic limitations. But more than once while reading Whistling Season I wanted to know just what the hell its point was. Not because the book lacks point, but because it warehouses a plethora of them. Is it a book about homesteaders on the American west in the age of the Industrial Revolution? Is it about the bonds of brotherhood after the death of a parent? Is it an old man's recollection of past events that have made him a successful adult? Is it a tribute to an unorthodox and life-changing teacher? Is it an ode to the heyday of the rural American one-room schoolhouse? Is it a lament for the "simpler" past before life became so complicated by technology? Is it a mystery of hidden pasts and obfuscated identities?
Or is it all these things at once? If so, my question then becomes: Why is it only 350 pages long?
And why, when it's so crammed with history and reflection and political commentary, does the book read so slowly? Why does the author depend upon cheap and episodic mid-book suspense plots like the younger brother's horse accident ("Oh no!" We're supposed to shout. "What if he's crippled?!"), the superintendent's investigation ("Oh no! The teacher is clearly the best the schoolhouse has ever had, but what if the inspector hates him anyway, closes the school down and sends the poor children to different schools where they'll have to ride -- gasp! -- buses?!"), etc. And what's up with the eleventh-hour business about two of the lead characters' hidden pasts? Is that episode, which feels like a short story tacked onto the end, just one more proof that the thirteen-year-old narrator is smarter than anyone else in the book?
Meanwhile, and now let's return a bit to Proust, the author writes in such self-consciously dense prose. My "favorite" examples are the sentences that start the chapters. For your pleasure, I'll type up a couple. Here's the one that starts Chapter Ten: "The Rembrandt light of memory, finicky and magical and faithful at the same time, as the cheaper tiny of nostalgia never is." Not a complete sentence at all, now isn't that cute? And here's from Chapter Seventeen: "Winters were the tree rings of homestead life, circumferences of weather thick or thin, which over time swelled into the abiding pattern of memory." As an undergraduate, I studied under a creative writing teacher who liked to perform "lofty" passages in his airy, mocking "bourgeois" voice. He would have lots of fun with this book.
April 15, 2019
I enjoyed reading the book, and found the writing to be very good. But it's the kind of read that, when I'm finished, I know I will never be tempted to reread. Just wasn't that special.
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Previous review: The Weather Makers
Next review: The French Revolution Carlyle
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Previous library review: Stones for Ibarra Doerr
Next library review: Disaster Was My God Duffy
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: The Weather Makers
Next review: The French Revolution Carlyle
More review: On Native Grounds of American literature and writers
Previous library review: Stones for Ibarra Doerr
Next library review: Disaster Was My God Duffy
October 26, 2020
No recuerdo la última vez que leí un libro tan feliz al mismo tiempo que tranquilo. Creo que es el libro perfecto para salir de un paron lector, depresión o trago amargo. Este libro es como los años de la infancia en los que los problemas y todo parecía más sencillo.
December 5, 2013
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 him, 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.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
"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.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
August 7, 2010
This is a near-flawless gem of storytelling. It is not a glamorous diamond of dubious origin or a smoky topaz that speaks of distant lands. It is a Yogo sapphire, a native gem of Montana, a stone that speaks of the endless blue of prairie skies, of cornflowers tucked in mountain valleys, of streams running high with wild trout.
Doig's narrator, Paul Milliron, is Montana's Superintendent of Public Instruction. It is the late 1950's and Paul has returned to his hometown in the prairie of central Montana to close its one-room schoolhouse. Paul's story takes us back to 1909, when the prairies bordering the Rocky Mountains were still gateways to an untamed West. We relive a few crucial years of Paul's coming-of-age, when his father, his brothers and one unforgettable teacher form a constellation of influence, love and protection and through which Paul sees the wonder of family, community and Halley's Comet.
There is nothing here but character, setting, plot. And these are everything. Don't mistake the simplicity and gentleness of Doig's narrative as anything other than sheer genius. There are no tricks, no clever twists, no moralizing, sentimentality or scolding to disguise Doig's true purpose: to tell a great story. A great American story .
This is a book I would read aloud to my children, to woo them into loving literature, to fill their imagination with young boys on horseback homesteading in the American West, to make them yearn to translate cryptic Latin proverbs and to allow them to recognize and be grateful for the teachers who give them the gift of knowledge.
Ivan Doig is a national treasure. This book is a work of beauty.
Doig's narrator, Paul Milliron, is Montana's Superintendent of Public Instruction. It is the late 1950's and Paul has returned to his hometown in the prairie of central Montana to close its one-room schoolhouse. Paul's story takes us back to 1909, when the prairies bordering the Rocky Mountains were still gateways to an untamed West. We relive a few crucial years of Paul's coming-of-age, when his father, his brothers and one unforgettable teacher form a constellation of influence, love and protection and through which Paul sees the wonder of family, community and Halley's Comet.
There is nothing here but character, setting, plot. And these are everything. Don't mistake the simplicity and gentleness of Doig's narrative as anything other than sheer genius. There are no tricks, no clever twists, no moralizing, sentimentality or scolding to disguise Doig's true purpose: to tell a great story. A great American story .
This is a book I would read aloud to my children, to woo them into loving literature, to fill their imagination with young boys on horseback homesteading in the American West, to make them yearn to translate cryptic Latin proverbs and to allow them to recognize and be grateful for the teachers who give them the gift of knowledge.
Ivan Doig is a national treasure. This book is a work of beauty.
August 7, 2014
Description: Can't cook but doesn't bite." So begins the newspaper ad offering the services of an "A-1 housekeeper, sound morals, exceptional disposition" that draws the hungry attention of widower Oliver Milliron in the fall of 1909. And so begins the unforgettable season that deposits the noncooking, nonbiting, ever-whistling Rose Llewellyn and her font-of-knowledge brother, Morris Morgan, in Marias Coulee along with a stampede of homesteaders drawn by the promise of the Big Ditch-a gargantuan irrigation project intended to make the Montana prairie bloom. When the schoolmarm runs off with an itinerant preacher, Morris is pressed into service, setting the stage for the "several kinds of education"-none of them of the textbook variety-Morris and Rose will bring to Oliver, his three sons, and the rambunctious students in the region's one-room schoolhouse.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 27, 2008
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 brother she brings, who ends up replacing the teacher at the school. Much of the book takes place in the classroom, and his teaching style makes for much enjoyment.
Ivan Doig's writing reminded me a little bit of Wallace Stegner or Leif Enger. He apparently has written several books, most which take place in Montana. I'm so happy to have discovered him.
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 brother she brings, who ends up replacing the teacher at the school. Much of the book takes place in the classroom, and his teaching style makes for much enjoyment.
Ivan Doig's writing reminded me a little bit of Wallace Stegner or Leif Enger. He apparently has written several books, most which take place in Montana. I'm so happy to have discovered him.
August 5, 2021
Tengo un viaje planeado para Montana a finales de Agosto. Quería leer un libro que me pusiera en contacto con la vida, la historia, las costumbres y geografía del lugar. Pero, más que todo eso, en este libro encontré a un escritor del que quiero seguir leyendo y conociendo. "No cocina, pero tampoco muerde" unos personajes y una historia memorables.
February 19, 2018
Loved the writing and the story. It was a heartwarming beautiful novel but not 5 star for me because it came together a little too pat. I did love reading it and will go on to read more Doig for sure. A great story of a dryland farmer in Montana and his three sons. After the death of their mother a housekeeper is hired and so begins the story. Who she is and how she and her brother change the lives of these first four and also the rest of the town is definitely a story worth reading. Loved most the latin that is woven so expertly throughout.
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