A review by ajsdf
English Creek by Ivan Doig

5.0

I have to laugh at myself for thinking it would take forever to read these 300-some pages of dense type, I who think nothing of rereading the 900-some pages of Bleak House over and over. I thought I wasn't going to enjoy this book. Why, I really don't know. But I loved it. The narrator is charming. The Two Medicine country might as well be another of the book's characters. (I'm sure I've read of landscapes being like novel's characters, but I'm not sure I've ever really thought so before.) There is one extended scene in the middle of the book that makes the whole thing worth reading, if indeed the whole thing were not worth it otherwise. The timelessness of the book kept me wondering all the time, forgetting it was set in 1930s Montana: rural life, familial and community relationships, protecting the National Forest, none of those are time-dependent even when approaches and tools change. After The Whistling Season, I knew I wanted to read more Doig, now after Prairie Nocturne and this, I won't be able to get enough.