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Title: This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind by Ivan Doig ISBN: 0-15-689982-5 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 19 February, 1980 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.95 (19 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A new West and a beautiful image
Comment: Ivan Doig's "This House of Sky" is an American masterpiece. It's easy to see the influence this book has had, both directly and indirectly, on other notable Western writers such as Gretel Ehrlich, Pam Houston and Ron Franscell. It is pure poetry in prose form, and we begin to see how the Western mind is formed by the forever landscape.
Doig is clearly an underappreciated American writer, particularly outside of the West. I would suggest this book to anyone who likes to read beautiful language about heartfelt subjects. I would further recommend "The Solace of Open Spaces" by Gretel Ehrlich and "Angel Fire" by Ron Franscell, both cut from the same lyrical, evocative Western cloth.
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the best books ever written!
Comment: This House of Sky chronicles the early years of a boy growing up in Montana under circumstances that to others might appear difficult - his mother died young, his father and grandmother bring him up, poverty is never far. The author is a remarkable man whose tale that describes a way of life gone by and people whose spirit and determination are hard to find. This is one of the few books that I have read more than once - even after four or five reads it remains fresh. This is also great book to give as a gift, and the recent hardcover version has a special forward by the author
Rating: 5
Summary: Growing up in Big Sky Country
Comment: As a writer, Ivan Doig is something of a favorite son in Montana, and for good reason. His memoir is a rhapsody of affection for the land where he grew up -- the small towns, homesteads and ranches in the Smith River Valley, along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, extending north to the Blackfeet Reservation on the Canadian border. It's also a wonderful and often touching story of a father and son. Born in 1939, Doig begins his tale with the emigration of his forebears from Scotland to Montana. At the end, in the 1970s, he has emerged as a writer with a graduate degree, living in Seattle, with rich and deeply felt memories of the people and the land he has known -- the house of sky.
An only child, his mother dying when he is six years old, Doig is raised by his father, Charlie, who works various jobs, sheepherding, haying, moving from place to place, and for a while leasing a small ranch of his own, his son in tow. Charlie is a hard-working man, with a big heart and tender love for his son. Concerned by a turn of bad health, he is reconciled to his mother-in-law, who did not approve of her daughter's marriage to him, and the three of them become a family that remains together until Charlie's death at age 70.
The book captures and preserves in detail a way of life that has almost vanished from America. Doig tells of growing up in wide open spaces among livestock and wildlife, learning from his father the skills of making a living off the land and surviving against the odds. He attends small town schools, spending the winters in rented rooms, seeing his father and grandmother only on weekends. Much of his time spent with adults or alone, he grows up more quickly than his peers and learns to love solitude.
At 300+ pages, this is not a long book, but it's no page-turner. You find yourself reading it slowly, relishing the rich prose style that captures the poetry in this landscape of mountains, valleys, and plains, as well as the people, with their personal quirks, habits, ways of talking, and often eccentric behavior. In fact, the book reads much like a novel, full of stories, colorful characters, humor, pathos, suspense, and adventures. The vividness of Doig's writing reflects his training as a journalist, and I suspect that he may have been influenced more than a little by the novels of Thomas Wolfe. I recommend "This House of Sky" to anyone with an interest in the West, nature writing, books about growing up, family sagas, ranching and rural life. As a companion volume, I recommend Wallace Stegner's "Wolf Willow," about his boyhood in southwestern Saskatchewan.
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Title: Heart Earth by Ivan Doig ISBN: 0140235086 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1994 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: DANCING AT THE RASCAL FAIR by Ivan Doig ISBN: 0684831058 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 11 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: English Creek (Contemporary American Fiction) by Ivan Doig ISBN: 0140084428 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: November, 1990 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Winter Brothers: A Season at the Edge of AMERICAN (AMERI)ca by Ivan Doig ISBN: 0156972158 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 20 October, 1982 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Ride With Me, Mariah Montana (Contemporary American Fiction) by Ivan Doig ISBN: 0140156070 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: November, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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