Rating: 
Summary: Highly enjoyable read as with all Doig books
Review: If you have never read a book by Ivan Doig, you're missing a wonderful collection of stories. As with earlier books, Mountain Time is largely set in Montana and Seattle and Doig makes it highly visual with his writing style. The terrain, the climate, the family generations and local customs are all described so well and so subtly that you will not immediately realize that he has transported you there. You will feel the story more than you read it. You will NOT be able to put this book down because you will be so committed to the characters and their search for meaning in life.
Rating: 
Summary: Still one of the West's best
Review: In Montana, not far from where Ivan Doig grew up beneath a big sky that still haunts him, three rivers flow together to form the deep and wide Missouri, lacing through both time and landscape, the old West and the new. And like the brawny Missouri, Doig has channeled three deep literary tributaries into "Mountain Time," a coda to his McCaskill family trilogy. Three people, three intense relationships, three rivers. "Mountain Time" is the confluence: The very real familial clash between Lyle and Mitch echoes the clash between the historic and contemporary West, where exploitation has always been at odds with environmental anxiety. "Mountain Time" will not dissuade those who rank Doig among the best living American writers, and one might even begin making comparisons to some of the best *dead* ones, too. Faulkner comes most readily to mind: The Snopeses of Yoknapatawpha County are no more troubled and no more human than the McCaskills of the Two Medicine country in Montana. Two great rivers in different landscapes.
Rating: 
Summary: Top notch storytelling
Review: It's true this is not Ivan Doig's best work. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to top my favorite, Dancing at the Rascal Fair. Mr. Doig's storytelling is honest and straightforward; his wordsmithing in high form. Some of the reviews indicate trite characterization of western Washington, and an uninvolving story with unsurprising revelations. Not true if you come to this story with different expectations. Life in Washington isn't the point of this story (and what may seem trite seemed all to real to what I've seen here in Seattle. Mr. Doig writes issues many Baby Boomers may be facing or have confronted: a dying parent; coming to gripes with a parent's choices; life changes, in this case, the impact of divorce on self; loss of job. Having experienced aspects of what this story covered, I found the novel a good depiction of these issues and relationships. Yes, it takes a while to get into the story, but once in I found it quite satisfying.
Rating:
Summary: Top notch storytelling
Review: It's true this is not Ivan Doig's best work. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to top my favorite, Dancing at the Rascal Fair. Mr. Doig's storytelling is honest and straightforward; his wordsmithing in high form. Some of the reviews indicate trite characterization of western Washington, and an uninvolving story with unsurprising revelations. Not true if you come to this story with different expectations. Life in Washington isn't the point of this story (and what may seem trite seemed all to real to what I've seen here in Seattle. Mr. Doig writes issues many Baby Boomers may be facing or have confronted: a dying parent; coming to gripes with a parent's choices; life changes, in this case, the impact of divorce on self; loss of job. Having experienced aspects of what this story covered, I found the novel a good depiction of these issues and relationships. Yes, it takes a while to get into the story, but once in I found it quite satisfying.
Rating: 
Summary: A Disappointment
Review: This is the first Doig novel I've ever read, and I'm afraid it will take a great deal to get me to try him again. This book was a real disappointment - from the characters I had a hard time caring about to the unbelievable dialogue. Who talks like that? Seattle may be oh, so hip, but pu-lease! Doig throws in so many one-liners and cultural references, it's like listening to a Dennis Miller routine. Yeah, I get 'em - it just becomes ridiculous after a while. I almost threw the book down when I came to the line "I came, I saw the paperwork, I don't concur." Yuck. The best parts where those describing the land - Montana, Seattle, Alaska. The book was good enough to get me through a flight to D.C. and back, but to compare this writer to Wallace Stegner causes me to wince.
Rating:
Summary: My first Doig
Review: Whether its because I'm a fifty-two year old guy who has had to deal with remarkably similar circumstances of ashes and irony, a distant daughter, moving on in life (to the Northwest)- I was able to look beyond the occasional too-hip dialogue and sometimes hyperbolic character or two and become unexpectedly engaged. The trek into the "Bob" was a joy.
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