This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind

This book is truly literature -- a story to be savored and underlined! Doig has an amazing memory of his past, and his words allow the reader to "remember and feel" their own. His portrayal of not only himself, but his father, and grandmother is rich and strong and set in a moving picture of seasons, actions and language of the people of Montana mountains and towns. I hope that these western mountain people with such courage and spirit still exist. It is remarkable that Doig gained such a command of language, but it is the words of his family and their outlook on life that stay with the reader.

as a ex sheepherder, sheep shearer, wool tromper who worked in the area ,in what seems to be the same time frame the book reminded me of a lot of good times and some not good times. Great country in the summer but not so nice in the winter.

I loved the writing and constantly stopped or slowed to admire the turn of a phrase new to my ear. The cumulative effect is a real sense of the rural areas and small towns of Montana over the past century. It is a memoir that presents a slowly unfolding story of how the land of the American West has shaped the characters of its people, and how they have in turn have influenced the character of the author--even as he moved away and assumed a very different lifestyle.

Having grown up in MT, I recognized allot of the towns and excited to read this book. The story is interesting enough, just not interesting enough for this reader. Give it a try ! Allot of the people in my book club enjoyed the book. To be fair, the Kindle version of this book left out most of the punctuation and the proofreader left allot spelling mistakes.

Loved Doig's novels (which, of course, is the reason I wanted to try the bio.) I also heard from others that it was great.

It was very slow, and I didn't really care about his growing up in the west....his descriptions of towns were better in novels, his stories were compelling. I don't know why he felt he had to write this, but it didn't draw me to him. In fact, just the opposite.

As I read the book, pages began separating from the binding in about half a dozen places. Also there were water spots on the top of the book. I was expecting something not brand new, but in better condition.

I got this book via paperbackswap.com spring or early summer 2017. I started reading it at the time, got only about 30 pages in (if that) and stopped reading it because it just didn't grab me. About two months ago I picked it up again and started at the beginning, determined to finish the book. I just did so a couple nights ago. This book is 314 pages. I can easily read a book of that length in a few days if it really engages me. This book did not.

Some who have given this book two stars have been baffled at why this book has gotten so many four- and five-star reviews. I share that feeling.
In fact, I'm surprised this book was even published. While Mr. Doig has some writing talent, his family history isn't sufficiently interesting to comprise an entire book. I think it might have been better if he had written a novel which incorporated the more interesting aspects of his family history. This book sometimes didn't flow well. Yes, the author and his father (and eventually maternal grandmother who joined them) moved often but I don't feel that was why the book sometimes didn't transition smoothly.

The author included things that were very brief and didn't seem to add to the story. For example, at the very bottom of page 244 in the paperback version I have, the author was home for the summer from college, had gotten a summer job, and was going into town to cash his first paycheck. He then went into a saloon as he was looking for a particular house on a hill. He talked to a customer who knew where it was. It was a house of "ill repute" that the author was looking for (although one had to read between the lines to get that). At the bottom of page 245 the author tried to pay the customer (enough for a couple beers) for the info but the customer waved him off, advising the author to spend it "up on the hill." That was the end of the author's anecdote about looking for the house on the hill. This one page of trying to find the brothel added nothing to the book. There was another part in the book (can't find the pages now) where the author spent 2-3 pages talking about how they counted sheep at the end of the season. I was dumbfounded that he spent that much time and that many words/pages talking about counting sheep. To me, it almost was like the author couldn't find enough interesting things to write about.

The author spent a lot of time describing the different locales where he had lived. When it came to the various towns, it seemed like he spent an inordinate amount of time describing the buildings--to the point that it was tedious. Yet, the more interesting element--the people--were often barely mentioned. For example, on page 88 he begins talking about some of the White Sulphur residents. He spends less than a page talking about Hendrik, the "madman."

The last chapter of the book, which talked about the health issues and deaths of the author's father and grandma, were more interesting to me. I was surprised that when I finished the book--considering that I really didn't like it that much--I felt a little sad. In the last chapter or so of the book, the author had done a decent job of describing his dad and grandma and the relationship between the two of them. They became people one cared about.

I was looking forward to reading this book based on the many favorable reviews. What a disappointment.

I gave up after about 50 pages. The prose is florid and very wordy. I found it tiresome to read. It reminds me of the old saying, "I asked him what time it was and he told me how to build a watch".

It is too bad as the subject matter could have been very interesting. I read constantly and like all sorts of subject matter. But when I find myself saying, "Stop, already! Get to the point", I know it's hopeless to struggle though.

I usually avoid memoirs. However, I picked this book up at an outstanding bookstore in Bozeman, MT, The Country Bookshelf. The staff recommended it in response to my asking for a popular local author . Their recommendation was spot on. Ivan Doig's account of herding sheep and otherwise growing up in mid twentieth century Montana is excellent. It held my attention to the end and from it I learned a lot about Montana and sheep herding that I did not know. His prose is elequent and his depiction of all the characters from his life heartwarming and insightful. Incidentally, I found the book by the aforementioned visit to the bookstore in Bozemen. I have found visiting local bookstores while travelling is fun and you learn of authors and their works A five star review all the way.

A book worthy of its high praise and awards. Ivan Doig's memoire of his youth in the rugged, harsh, and beautiful Montana landscape is poetic and heartfelt. This is a story of hardship, triumph, and love of his father and maternal grandmother. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys stories of a family's love and perseverance.
- Please note: as of 5/18/17 author Ivan Doig's the store biography is badly out of date. To our collective great misfortune, Mr. Doig died on 4/9/15.

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.

Read this in the company of someone else. Every five minutes or so you'll call attention to something in the text -- a choice description, a picturesque flow of words, a bit of hilarity that will reduce you both to laughter. This is a book to be shared.
Doig is a gifted writer with the facility of a James Agee in his choice of words and phrasing. On the page he presents a constant wild, vivid sensory impression, as if you were riding on horseback with him through his beloved Montana hills, sharing the terrain, people and history in ways you hadn't experienced before and couldn't experience anywhere else.
His descriptions show keen insight and attention to detail through carefully chosen, apt simile and metaphor. "I had noticed at Jordan's," he writes about a situation he experienced as a child, "...the boarding child is something like a stranded visitor that people get accustomed to half-seeing at the edges of their vision -- and no one, least of all me, seemed to think there was much unusual about my alighting here and there casually as a roosting pullet."
As a young boy, exploring: "For by greatest luck a silvered ship, high-hulled and pinging with emptiness, rode at the far end of the ranch buildings. A ship, at least to my imaginings. In the years when the machine chomped broadly through grainfields, it was called a combine. Now this dreadnaught stood, in its tones of dulling metal and cluster of idle gearwheels, for me to climb into..."
Here's the epitome of fine writing. You won't find more vivid images anywhere and he doesn't stint at all with language. Like this description of a teacher: "She was buxom, much like Grandma with a half more plumped all around; her mounding in front and behind was very nearly more than the lackadaisical dresses wanted to contain. Leaning forward from the waist as she hurried about, she flew among us like a schooner's lusty figurehead prowing over a lazy sea."
To read Doig's books is to experience Montana and a world long past. This is a book to be savored, treasured and read again and again.

Over 30 years ago, this book transported me to the Smith River Valley and the town of White Sulfur Springs before I'd ever seen or heard of such. Later being there was like a return to a beloved, familiar haunt. The Valley sprawling below, flanked by the Castle and the Big Belt mountain ranges. The mountains themselves, grasslands on the lower slopes giving way to timbered summits. The rocky outcropping on the Castle Mountains. The T-shaped town of White Sulphur Springs, where the school play yard abuts the exercise yard of the county jail. I've had a beer or two in the Stockman (though not the Mint), and breakfasted in the cafe once worked by Charley Doig and the author's stepmother (at least I think that's the one--with the mounted animal heads on the walls). I've soaked in the hot spring-fed pool at the motel, had emergency car repair work done at the gas station across from the courthouse, and bought tools at Mile High Hardware. The town was a gem as it was, but Ivan Doig's memories brought it further to life.

Then there were the less tangible scenes in the book; driving sheep to summer pastures, living in sheepherders' camps. The shearing season. To think a man not much older than I experienced such a boyhood! And by not romanticizing it, the author renders it all the more magic.

Doig's fiction that followed is good. But it's the descriptions and evocation of moods that I most treasure in his work.

I have become addicted to a faster pace of literary mystery novels so upon beginning this highly recommended book I almost quit it because of its slower pace and knowing up front there was not a mystery to be solved.

This was a book the author needed to write but did I need to read it? Yes.

I live in the mountains of New Mexico and this story is about Montana. But it is in a larger sense, as the title suggests, about a marriage of the soul with the landscape. I fit into this landscape and the stories recalled have parallel in my life. By the last chapter I was wedded to the author's life as to my own.

This is a well written memoir about growing up in Montana. People and place come alive. Each page is like an essay and should be read slowly to be appreciated. The first part of the book tells the story of his father growing up. While I found that interesting, the second half of the book is all told from the author's memory. This is the best part. The portrait of life with his father, and then with his father and grandmother, is especially engaging. That's when the story becomes personal. Ivan Doig's grandmother is the most interesting character, one I feel I know so well. I read this memoir because I had spent time in Montana, a state I had grown to love. After reading this book, I feel even more attached to that great state.

This is classic Ivan Doig. If you know the West, you'll appreciate the descriptions of life lived in the hard Montana high country. I read pages to my children about Doig's experience's at school and read my father the passages on page 10 and 11 just because the writing and imagery was so lovely, "Memory is a set of sagas we live by, much the way of the Norse wildman in thier bear shirts. That such rememberings take place in a single cave of brain rather than half a hundred minds warrened wildly into one another makes them sagas no less..... Marauders, we are marauded, too. Darkness blankets down around a child as if the planet's caves have emptied all their shadows over him. Everything fights the child's ambitions--fences reach too high, streets stretch too wide, days too short and too long....". This is a poignant and lovely book. A great winter read, well articulated and well worth your time. I highly recommend it.

Essentially an autobiography, in this book Doig tells the story of his growing up in the West. As a reader, it is to enjoy fictitious characters (after all, that is what they were invented for!). Doig has the ability to see the extraordinary in ordinary (real) people, and portrays it beautifully here. The complex relationships between himself, his father, and his maternal grandmother mirror real lives that many (most?) of us experience. However, Doig is able to show the reader the beauty of their souls in thoroughly regular settings. I envy him the degree of his insight into those around him.

This book is a masterpiece of writing. It is elegant and full of every kind of emotion that humans are capable of. This book takes you to beautiful Montana where the author was raised by his widowed father in a rough, demanding environment with little money.
Throughout his life, the father continuously makes sacrifices to give his son a better life, and opportunities that didn't exist in the Montana mountains. They had a hard life, full of setbacks, but rather than whining about it, they dealt with it, and they survived together. By example, his father pass's his love, compassion, courage and integrity to his son.
Reading this book should give you a better understanding of your relationship with your father or parents, and why they did things the way they did.
I have shared this book with many other people, all of whom have loved it.

The words of Doig paint such vivid pictures that one's mind hears the wind, feels the weariness of hard labour and hard scrabbleliving. The emotion he evokes is universal and the depth of it seldom accurately described but Doig is a word master. Rich, beautifully written book.

Thank-you Ivan Doig. This book is wonderful. I had started the book and then put it down realizing that I wanted to savor this book. I picked this book up again after reading Close Range by Annie Proulx. What a relief House of Sky was. Great way to see Montana, the writing takes you there.
This is Ivan Doig's story of growing up in Montana. It was not an easy life. His widowed father kept Ivan close, made sacrifices, taught him everything he knew. The father even made a truce with his mother-in-law for Ivan's sake. Ivan was raised by two strong characters! Which made Ivan a strong character.
I would highly recommend this book. It touches all the parts of your heart.

I ordered this book when it was first published for my dad. When I was home for his funeral the bookstore called to tell me it was in. I bought the book and read it about 6 months later. I have never read a book that was so unique in the way the author used language. If you want to know how cowboys and sheepherders in Montana speak read this book. If you want to know how people compromise themselves for the ones they love read this book. If you want to gain insight into a truely fine father and son relationship read this book. If you don't want to be moved to tears and laughter don't read this book. It took me over a year to finish this book because the language was so vivid it transported me back to my childhood and I felt as it I were sitting in my dads truck listening to him shoot the breeze with his cowboy friends. My fathers voice whispered in my ear and I would have to put the book down. Read this book you will not be disappointed.