Ivan Doig
Otago Daily Times, Best Books 2011
When a friend sent me Ivan Doig’s memoir This House of Sky, I started reading more out of obligation than any real interest the life of an American writer I’d never heard of. Within pages I was captivated by a story less about the author than about the three forces that shaped his life.
Raised on the Montana plains, following his father from ranch to ranch in search of work, Doig’s upbringing was far from typical. That he flourished is a testament to two people, his father and his maternal grandmother, mutual enemies who put aside their animosity to create a home for him after his mother’s death. The relationship between them forms the core of the story, overarched by the presence of the land itself; although I have never been to the American Midwest, it came to feel as familiar to me as the West Coast bush that defined my own childhood, and reminded me that identity is formed by place as well as time. While hard to find, this is a book that is well worth hunting down.
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