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The Whistling Season
The Whistling Season | Ivan Doig
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. A paean to a vanished way of life and the eccentric individuals and idiosyncratic institutions that made it fertile, The Whistling Season is Ivan Doig at his evocative best.
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Octoberwoman
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I‘m posting one book a day from my massive collection. No description, no reason for why I want to read it (some I‘ve had so long I don‘t even remember why!). Feel free to join in!

#ABookADay2024

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sherrisilvera
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I opened June #bookspin and found a surprise I left to myself! Favorite author from a favorite bookstore I visited with favorite person @mrp27 on vacation a few years ago❣️

@TheAromaofBooks

mrp27 Aww… Good times for sure! 1y
TheAromaofBooks Oh how fun!!! 1y
25 likes1 stack add2 comments
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slhbooks
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Mehso-so

This was just a so-so read for me. It moved slowly and I was not really invested in the characters. I have the 'sequel' too and will probably pass on that one. I've read other Ivan Doig's books (The Bartender's Tale, Last Bus to Wisdom) and really enjoyed them so I don't feel too bad that this one was a disappointment.
That's Nellie that I so rudely cropped in my haste to get all my 2017 reads posted. I'll make it up to her. #catsoflitsy

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Lcsmcat
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#favoriteauthors, in no particular order. Top to bottom, left to right: Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Margaret Atwood, Ivan Doug, Jane Smiley, Ann Patchett, Thomas Hardy (looking a bit like Poirot), Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Wilfred Owen, Emily Dickinson, William Shakespeare, John Donne, Maya Angelou, Anthony Trollope, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Billy Collins. #awesomeautumnbooks @Jess7

39 likes1 stack add
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LindsayReads
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@ValerieAndBooks I have had a similar experience! Anyone else catch cover twinsies? #recycledcovers

ValerieAndBooks @lindsayreads funny how one is non-fic and the other is a novel....I think a pic of a crumbling inner-city school might have fit better than an old schoolhouse for the first (but I haven't read it yet so idk). @8little_paws interesting! It doesn't look like The Couple Next Door stayed with that cover in other editions....maybe they realized the duplication?! 8y
26 likes4 comments
review
Imagineannie
Whistling Season | Ivan Doig
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Pickpick

This was pressed on me by a friend a few years ago. I read the back cover blurb and knew I'd hate it. She kept asking, I kept dodging until I gave in. Turns out that it's a magnificent sleeper, a gentle thing that is also somehow strong enough to break your heart and leave you gasping. Trust me.

MyBookLife An unusual description of the book, I didn't really get what it is about? 9y
Imagineannie @MyBookLife I can't do it in 300 words. Better to read a description on Goodreads or Amazon (or here). It's about Montana and farming and family and boxing and teaching and learning and what it really means to be a decent human being. For starters. 9y
MyBookLife @Imagineannie I read the description here on litsy, but it didn't give me a feel of the book. Is it sad? Funny? Intriguing? 9y
Imagineannie @MyBookLife some funny but mostly not, very compelling - it's character-driven (if you include the town as a character) and there's a little mystery and I just really wanted to know what happened to the people. Also I kind of fell in love with one of them. 9y
MyBookLife @Imagineannie That sounds like my kind of book! *adding* Thank you!! 9y
10 likes3 stack adds5 comments