Our last book club read of the year for our on-line zoom Laughing Ladies Book Club was Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig.
It was my pick, and I have to say, it wasn’t a good one. I loved the first book I read by Ivan Doig, The Whistling Season, and this one had good reviews, so I was excited. In my opinion Dancing at the Rascal Fair rated three W’s – Whining, wordy and weary. This novel was so frustrating. Doig’s style of writing is a mixed bag. At times, I laughed out loud and loved his imagery and style. At other times I got bogged down in his wordiness. I think he needed a new editor. Similar to one of our other recent reads, the love story theme was wanting. The main character, Angus McCaskill doesn't get to marry the woman he loves (and he decides he loves her in like 5 minutes) and then he spends the rest of the book whining and pining for the woman he can't have. Totally unrealistic and tiresome. The love of his life is a one-dimensional character who is never developed. He doesn’t brook any sympathy with the reader, nor with the brother of the woman he does marry as his fallback choice.
There are some positives. I liked reading about the early settler days of Montana and homesteading. As one of our members said, it was a male narrated Little House on the Prairie. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to have lived in Montana without the benefit of central heat or a good means of transportation. I liked that they focused on the value of education for their children, and I learned a whole lot about sheep farming.
In addition to the whining aspect previously mentioned, I thought the book could have been at least a third less in pages with good editing. It was not a fast read by any stretch. In fact, we pushed our book club back by two weeks to let some of the people finish it.
Like a Montana winter, this book seemed to last forever. I would skip this one, and read The Whistling Season.
In spite of my negative review, we had a great time discussing the book and visiting via zoom.
I think I may have liked the book the least of any of us. Two of our members actually listened to it by audio book and seemed to thoroughly enjoy it. That may be stretching it a bit, but they liked it more than me! It was fun catching up with each other and discussing books!