This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind
by Ivan Doig
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Description
A haunting, magnificently written memoir by Ivan Doig about growing up in the American West Ivan Doig grew up in the rugged wilderness of western Montana among the sheepherders and denizens of small-town saloons and valley ranches. What he deciphers from his past with piercing clarity is not only a raw sense of land and how it shapes us but also of the ties to our mothers and fathers, to those who love us, and our inextricable connection to those who shaped our values in our search for show more intimacy, independence, love, and family. A powerfully told story, This House of Sky is at once especially American and universal in its ability to awaken a longing for an explicable past. show lessTags
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browner56 Elegiac and beautifully written memoirs of growing up in Montana at the beginning of the last century.
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Member Reviews
This memoir was completed in 1978,a few years after Doig lost two of the most important people in his life, his father and his maternal grandmother, who raised him together after his mother died when he was six years old. They are the stars of the story, but Ivan himself figures very prominently in it, as it tells of his own young life under the rugged conditions of mid-20th century Montana ranching and sheep-herding. It is easy to see the seeds of his novels in his own upbringing--and what a harvest he made of it. Doig's gift with the language is priceless...he just drops golden sentences all over the pages, and makes it seem effortless and utterly un-self-conscious. I'm convinced that he talked exactly as he wrote, and that he would show more have been just as much of a joy to listen to as he is to read. Five stars. show less
A beautifully written memoir of the author's childhood and growing up in a now vanished near-wild landscape, with a particular emphasis on how necessity and hardship, and even tragedy, can draw people together, and bond even enemies into that extraordinary and powerful thing we call a family. His unflinchingly honest portrayals of his father and grandmother, with all their faults and foibles, demonstrate the power of this transformation, and the foundation it creates for navigating through life.
Doig’s memoir reads like a stunning love letter to the great expanses of Montana and the unique souls it is home to. Painstakingly compiled journal entries, memories, and stories from his now departed father and grandmother, This House of Sky is both poetically gorgeous and heart wrenching. From the early death of his mother to an unpredictable childhood spent ranch hopping with his emotionally damaged sheepherding father to coping as an adult with his father’s downward slide from emphysema, Doig recounts his own youth and that of his father in an honest and unsympathetic, yet honorable way. Stunning imagery of pioneer-era Montana and the changes its ranches have undergone offers an unforgettable backdrop to Doig’s moving literary show more dedication to his father. show less
Review disclaimer: My maternal grandmother grew up on a Montana ranch. Her best friend was the daughter of Judge Rankin, whose name was apparently a curse word amongst other ranchers and ranch hands. Jeannette Rankin became my mother's godmother, and the first woman elected to the US House of Representatives, so I felt a special kinship.
My, oh my! Ivan Doig, always a master of lovely prose, applies his gift to his autobiography. The reader is immersed in the landscape of Montana and it's reflection in the Doig family's life. It is noble, human, gritty, grueling, and full of deep love. A treasure!
My, oh my! Ivan Doig, always a master of lovely prose, applies his gift to his autobiography. The reader is immersed in the landscape of Montana and it's reflection in the Doig family's life. It is noble, human, gritty, grueling, and full of deep love. A treasure!
Those of you who pay attention to my reading likes/dislikes will know that I don't usually gravitate towards books that describe the toil of living in the American West. After reading This House of Sky, I think this may change. Doig's memoir of the tough ranching life of his father, the early loss of his mother (when Doig was only six), Doig's strong, determined maternal grandmother and the harsh realities of those Montana winters resonates throughout this book. As one reviewer put it, this is "a dazzling, lyrical summoning of his Montana childhood", wonderfully capturing time and place with a contemplative tone that seems to echo with Montana's rolling hills and spacious prairies. What a perfect way to experience Doig's writing style show more for the very first time! I am finding that authors tend to make their memoirs 'live' for the reader to experience, so I will be keeping an eye out for more author memoirs. A wonderful read. show less
Ivan Doig is my wife's favorite author. I'm certain she's read every one of his books, and there have been several. And since he lives in our area, she has taken me along several times to listen to him read from his new work as it came out. As a result, I tried to read one of his fictional books some time back and immediately ran into what seems a trait of Doig, a trait of starting the reader out with an avalanche of descriptive text. To me, it feels like a lifetime to work through a single paragraph. So I gave up. This book was no different, but (1) it was nonfiction, and (2) it was perhaps his most highly regarded book, so I persevered. It was very good I did. True, this is a memoir, a man telling about his life growing up in rural show more Montana, a place that could just as well have been Turkey or the Australian outback, as far as the typical American would think. So, yes, there's an element of travel adventure to it. (There are a number of very memorable scenes.) Ultimately, however, this is Doig's reflection on the complex dynamics that constitute a family, no matter how "normal" or out of the ordinary it may seem. After the initial descriptive flood, Doig settles into a flow of seeing life to which the reader can easily relate, no matter how foreign it may be at first glance. Each scene, each setting flows so well from one stage of his life to another, the reader moves through the years without hesitation. At some point, as the author's life takes him away from the reader's home base of Montana, Doig's writing style changes. As Doig is now in college (Northwestern University), the writing abruptly switches to a series of brief tales, often one not at all related to the other. And just as I'm starting to tell myself that I do not appreciate this loss of narrative flow, Doig pulls out some of most moving narrative I have ever read, a narrative that could never have had the impact it had without all that had gone before, with all of the patience that Doig had brought to bear to get us to that point. I was so moved by the writing at that point, that I found myself reading it to my wife, the true Doig disciple. Doig soon returns to his flowing style and takes us to the eventual end of his childhood family. It was a journey well worth taking. show less
Book Description: from Amazon.ca
Ivan Doig grew up in the rugged wilderness of western Montana among the sheepherders and denizens of small-town saloons and valley ranches. What he deciphers from his past with piercing clarity is not only a raw sense of land and how it shapes us but also of the ties to our mothers and fathers, to those who love us, and our inextricable connection to those who shaped our values in our search for intimacy, independence, love, and family.
My Review:
Lyrically and beautifully written, This House of Sky evokes an intimate sense of place in the Montana frontier. Doig’s memories of the characters he meets throughout his peripatetic upbringing – one ranch to the next – are effused with idiosyncrasies and show more humour. When Doig loses his mother as a young child, the tragedy serves to make the bond between he and his father the more intimate. And after his maternal grandmother is widowed and Lady, as she is always addressed by his father, becomes a permanent staple in their lives – the team of three and the relationship that evolves between them becomes something unforgettable, best described by Doig:
Memory is akin of homesickness, and like homesickness, it falls short of the actualities on almost every count. In the end, I come to think of the wondrous writer Isak Dinesen, when she was taken up in a biplane over the green resplendent highlands of Kenya and arrived back to earth to say, The Language is short of words for the experiences of flying, and will have to invent new words with time. So do I wait for the language of memory to come onto the exact tones of how the three of us, across our three generations and our separations of personality, became something-both-more-and-less-than-a-family and different from anything sheathed in any of the other phrases of kinship. (239)
Highly recommended, particular to those who enjoy a frontier story, historical non-fiction, and an intimate look at the relationships that shape us. show less
Ivan Doig grew up in the rugged wilderness of western Montana among the sheepherders and denizens of small-town saloons and valley ranches. What he deciphers from his past with piercing clarity is not only a raw sense of land and how it shapes us but also of the ties to our mothers and fathers, to those who love us, and our inextricable connection to those who shaped our values in our search for intimacy, independence, love, and family.
My Review:
Lyrically and beautifully written, This House of Sky evokes an intimate sense of place in the Montana frontier. Doig’s memories of the characters he meets throughout his peripatetic upbringing – one ranch to the next – are effused with idiosyncrasies and show more humour. When Doig loses his mother as a young child, the tragedy serves to make the bond between he and his father the more intimate. And after his maternal grandmother is widowed and Lady, as she is always addressed by his father, becomes a permanent staple in their lives – the team of three and the relationship that evolves between them becomes something unforgettable, best described by Doig:
Memory is akin of homesickness, and like homesickness, it falls short of the actualities on almost every count. In the end, I come to think of the wondrous writer Isak Dinesen, when she was taken up in a biplane over the green resplendent highlands of Kenya and arrived back to earth to say, The Language is short of words for the experiences of flying, and will have to invent new words with time. So do I wait for the language of memory to come onto the exact tones of how the three of us, across our three generations and our separations of personality, became something-both-more-and-less-than-a-family and different from anything sheathed in any of the other phrases of kinship. (239)
Highly recommended, particular to those who enjoy a frontier story, historical non-fiction, and an intimate look at the relationships that shape us. show less
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Author Information
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Ivan Doig was born in White Sulphur Springs, Montana in 1939. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in history from University of Washington. Before becoming an author, he worked as a ranch hand and a journalist. His non-fiction works include This House of Sky, Winter Brothers, and Heart show more Earth. His fiction titles include English Creek, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, Bucking the Sun, The Whistling Season, The Bartender's Tale, and Last Bus to Wisdom. He received several awards including the Western Literature Association's Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award and the Wallace Stegner Award in 2007. He died of multiple myeloma on April 8, 2015 at the age of 75. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Das Haus des Himmels
- Original title
- This house of sky
- Original publication date
- 1978
- People/Characters*
- Ivan Doig
- Important places
- Montana, USA; American West
- Dedication
- "for Stan
from my house of sky to yours"
Signed by the author
To my wife, Carol. Westward we go free. - First words
- Soon before daybreak on my sixth birthday, my mother's breathing wheezed more raggedly than ever, then quieted. And then stopped.
- Quotations
- I glance higher for some hint of the weather, and the square of air broadens and broadens to become the blue expanse over Montana rangeland, so vast and vaulting that it rears, from the foundation-line of the plains horizon, ... (show all)to form the walls and roof of all life’s experience that my younger self could imagine, a single great house of sky.
But not even scouring can get at the deepest crevices of memory, and in them I glimpse Ruth again. I see best the eyes, large and softly brown with what seemed to be some hurt beginning to happen behind them--the deep trapped... (show all) look of a doe the instant before she breaks for cover. [69]
And the mystery in her could not be missed, the feeling that being around her somehow was like watching the roulette wheel in the Maverick make its slow, fanlike ambush on chance. [70] - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Then my father and my grandmother go, together, back elsewhere in memory, and I am left to think through the fortune of all we experienced together. And of how, now, my single outline meets the time-swept air that knew theirs.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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