The Whistling Season
by Ivan Doig
[Book]
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“Can’t cook but doesn’t bite.” So begins the newspaper ad offering the services of an “A-1 housekeeper, sound morals, exceptional disposition” that draws the hungry attention of widower Oliver Milliron in the fall of 1909. And so begins the unforgettable season that deposits the noncooking, nonbiting, ever-whistling Rose Llewellyn and her font-of-knowledge brother, Morris Morgan, in Marias Coulee along with a stamped of homesteaders drawn by the promise of the Big Ditch — a gargantuan irrigation project intended to make the Montana prairie bloom. When the schoolmarm runs off with an itinerant preacher, Morris is pressed into service, setting the stage for the “several kinds of education” — none of them of the textbook variety — Morris and Rose will bring to Oliver, his three sons, and the rambunctious students in the region’s one-room schoolhouse.
A paean to a vanished way of life and the eccentric individuals and idiosyncratic institutions that made it fertile, The Whistling Season is Ivan Doig at his evocative best.
Reviewed by Dylan
Tagged: Culinary fiction, Education, Families, Fiction, Frontier, Historical fiction, Western
Little Miss Sunshine
[DVD]
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This movie shows that life is an adventure. An imperfect, slightly dysfunctional family of six sets out on a road trip, and all their quirky personalities are crowded together in one bright yellow van that cannot hope to contain them. As they encounter ever more emotional and mechanical breakdowns the characters learn how to handle imperfection and failure. They encounter situations which are sometimes dark, yet still hilarious. With lots of situational irony and dry humor, Little Miss Sunshine is a story which will make life’s difficulties feel like just little bumps in the road.
Reviewed by Charlotte
Tagged: Families, Feature film, Humor
Home
by Marilynne Robinson
[Book]
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The third in her trilogy about Gilead, Robinson tells the story of a family and its community from yet another viewpoint, that of Glory Boughton the unmarrried daughter come home to care for her ailing father. The character development in an old refrain of loved ones in pain is exquisite. John, her brother the outsider, comes vividly off the pages in his tender love and despair.
Reviewed by Sarah W
Tagged: Families, Fiction
