English Creek

Rating:
Summary: Characters, descriptive language, and style!
Review: A reviewer of Mr. Doig's "English Creek" notes that it does not deal with a "dysfunctional family". The other current fad the author avoids is the emphasis on "quirkiness" vs. character. Like Wallace Stegner and David Guterson, Mr. Doig's feeling for the land is aparent in his careful and lovely descriptions. Most of all, he presents us with characters so well developed and described we feel we know them. This emphasis on believable characters is, in my estimation, the strongest point of "Dancing at the Rascal Fair" and "English Creek". I enjoyed both tremendously and look froward to finishing the Montana trilogy.

Rating:
Summary: Simply magical!
Review: Doig's characters are just incredible. His sense of humor is immense. His description of the depression years in Montana is fascinating. And of course, the landscapes inspired by his acquaintance with the countryside depicted in ENGLISH CREEK are breathtaking. This is the best book I have read in ages! I am going to find a way to work it into my American literature course, because it is not only a great book, it's a priceless piece of Americana.

Rating:
Summary: Simply magical!
Review: Doig's characters are just incredible. His sense of humor is immense. His description of the depression years in Montana is fascinating. And of course, the landscapes inspired by his acquaintance with the countryside depicted in ENGLISH CREEK are breathtaking. This is the best book I have read in ages! I am going to find a way to work it into my American literature course, because it is not only a great book, it's a priceless piece of Americana.

Rating:
Summary: I loved the style, but not the ending.
Review: Doig's writing, like so many who are from Montana and write about it, captures nature beautifully. Like other writers from this area (Norm McClean comes to mind) Doig paints a beautiful picture of plains, mountains, and of course the weather becomes a character in itself. My only disappointment was the denouement in the end. It rather strained the credibility of an otherwise realistic story. I would rather Doig had stayed away from actually telling a story, and had made it more a novel "about nothing." For this reason, I enjoyed "This House of Sky" more, but this is still a novel which I feel falls into the class of literature, rather than popular fiction. For me, that is high praise indeed.

Rating:
Summary: Doig writes books as real as life itself
Review: ENGLISH CREEK is about a boy's awakening into maturity. It's the summer of his 15th birthday and Jick McCaskill experiences new awareness -- of his history as well as of his relationships with and among family and friends. His sense of security is threatened when his older brother defies their parents to take up with a local beauty and become a cowboy instead of going to college. Jick is challenged by unexpected changes in new grown-up ways and as he meets those challenges he sees himself and his world through a dying innocence.

To say Doig's prose is rich and powerful is like describing a tornado as breezy. A master of the English language, story-teller par excellence and character builder supreme, funny, intelligent, witty, sad is to understate. Superlatives fall short of accuracy. Ivan Doig's books are as real as life itself. To contemplate his words is to rethink reality and to embrace new insights.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Coming Of Age Book
Review: Ivan Doig is one of the great American writers. This book is, chronologically, in the middle of what started out as a trilogy (Dancing At The Rascal Fair and Ride With Me Mariah Montana being the bracketing books) that expanded with Mountain Time. This book is also the most accessible to people who are not familiar with Doig but who might enjoy books about boys coming of age. Doig is a brilliant writer, better than Stegner. I recommend all of the books in the series.

Rating:
Summary: Yeah, it's for English class.
Review: The year is 1939, and Jick McCaskill is the most charming fourteen year old man of the land in Montana. At this tender age, he is just beginning to discover who he is and what he wants out of life. Ivan Doig paints a truly heartwarming picture of a young Montana boy's journey through adolescence in this poignant story about life in the country. The colorful characters are certain to remind you of your own friends and family, and Jick's boyish whims will bring you back to the joys and hardships of growing up. The quirky, humorous comparisons and tart cynicsms also contribute to the allure of the novel. However, this book is not for those with short attention spans. Doig uses beautiful , graceful language to describe the Two Medicine Country of Montana over and over and over again, and it begins to seem redundant. The general flow of the story is slow and steady with no real change in pace. This book will be a relaxing read if nothing else, and the recurring motif of the past helps to maintain a nostalgic tone throughout. This tale of turning points will carry you through family strife, natural disasters, and the resolving of age old grudges on the shoulders of Jick McCaskill. You will relive (or experience) the advancement frok grape soda to whiskey, and remember what its like to stand up to a family member for the first time. It will remind you to cherish the past, but live in the present, and make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, as long as you stay awake long enough to get through it.

Rating:
Summary: Very Dull
Review: This is a fabulous book. The writing is not focused on action and plot, but on character and setting. Doig creates a vivid Montana scene while leading his main character, Jick, through a book paced exactly as his summer. If you are looking for good literature, read this book.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Coming Of Age Book
Review: This is a very good coming of age novel - historical novel. Set in rural Montana on the eve of World War II, English Creek describes the summer experiences of an intelligent 15 year old. Written by a Montana native who has done a good deal of historical research, English Creek is not only a Bildungsroman but also a detailed portrait of life in rural Montana. Told with humor and considerable insight, English Creek is a sweet but not saccharine book about a more innocent but not necessarily easier time.

Rating:
Summary: Good Bildungsroman
Review: This is a very good coming of age novel - historical novel. Set in rural Montana on the eve of World War II, English Creek describes the summer experiences of an intelligent 15 year old. Written by a Montana native who has done a good deal of historical research, English Creek is not only a Bildungsroman but also a detailed portrait of life in rural Montana. Told with humor and considerable insight, English Creek is a sweet but not saccharine book about a more innocent but not necessarily easier time.