I couldn't finish this although I gave it a good one hundred pages. If I didn't know better, I would have said that Ivan Doig didn't write this - it wandered, was disjointed, I had difficulty following whatever plot line there was. The characters didn't grow. I have always counted Doig's works among my favorites - Dancing at the Rascal Fair, Whistling Season - just terrific stories of Montana and the characters who inhabited the country. This was a big disappointment. Three and a half stars.Ben Reinking is an Army pilot in World War Two who gets dragooned into writing for the Threshold Press War Project, a military journalism outfit, before he is able to fly one mission. His assignment is to track down and write stories on his 10 other teammates from the glorious undefeated 1941 Treasure State University football team. Odds are, all of them but one will survive the war. Ben finds out that odds are not on his teammates' side.One of my favorite books from last summer was Doig's The Bartender's Tale. So, I took Eleventh Man out of the library with some excitement. Unfortunately, this book simply didn't grab a hold of me the way Bartender's Tale did, although the laconic Tom Harry from BT does make a couple of cameo appearances, once in a scene with Ben and once in a scene with his father, the editor of Gros Ventre's small newspaper. The story is certainly interesting enough, although contrived at times, and Ben's relationship with Cass reminds us that he is human and fallible. For all of that, the characters in this book lacked the charm and magnetism of those in BT. Also, I found the settings to be more flat than in BT.A good read, but not as memorable as some of his other works. I look forward to reading more of Doig's work.
What do You think about The Eleventh Man (2008)?
Love Doig's writing. Interesting story and a look at history from a different point of view.
—Bianca
still pretty slow... stopped to read a different book.
—Prinita
lots of learning in this book about ppl.
—Kennethh
