Rating: 
Summary: Great intro to the trilogy
Review: "English Creek" is a great intro into the trilogy. I have just finished all three and hated to see the end of each. You truly grow to love the characters. This book remind me of "All the Pretty Horses" as it focuses on a young man coming of age in the 20's & 30's - about the time of many of our WW II vets.
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: If Only World Enough & Time
Review: Doig details the life of the 14-year-old Jick in Two Medicine Country. This is a subtle, slice of life book that in the end will split your heart like a close knit family suddenly breaking apart. The images of the people of Two Medicine Country, the dance scene, and the relationship of Jick with his older brother fall into your mind like your own memories. This is the masterpiece by one of this century's best.
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: 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 coming of age book in 1930s front-range Montana.
Review: English Creek will linger in your memory. Its story of 14 year old Jick McCaskill is by far the best of Ivan Doig's Montana books. He probes Jick's coming of age, his relations with his family (not a dysfunctional one either), and culminates in Jick's assumption of responsibility fighting a massive forest fire. A lyrically written, memorable book.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Dull
Review: I had to read this book for my college english class and it may in fact be the most boring book I have ever read. I am an avid reader and usually will read anything that I can get my hands on but I couldn't wait to end this stupid book and get on with my life. Every single one of my classmates hated it and unless you're a very cruel english teacher please don't make your poor students read this god forsaken book. I only gave it two stars because the last two pages were the only interesting ones out of the VERY long drawn out book!
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