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Summary: Just another wordy book!
Review: This book was good but the only thing that made it worth reading was the end. Cold Mountain slowly drifted along in my mind for chapters. Then suddenly it started to pick up and it turned out to be a decent book. This book was definately a high school english book or there is no way I would not read it
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Summary: Cold Mountain is sure to become a classic!
Review: I am a student at Coventry High School, in Akron, OH, and my CP American Lit class recently finished reading this book. As far as we know we are the first class to read this book as an assignment and I am sure we will not be the last. Charles Frazier is a great new author. Through- out the entire book, I always had a vivid picture of the story along with a greater understanding of the Cold Mountain region and its nature. The characters of Ada and Inman were very true to life and Frazier was able to keep you interested by giving little details of their past throughout the story. By weaving both characters lives together and adding numerous other encounters such as, Ruby and her father Stobrod, the plot was anything but dull. The ending was a complete surprise and totally caught me off guard. I was so wrapped up in Ada and Inmans love affair that it actually brought tears to my eyes. This is a great book for any age! Some may think that Cold Mountain is inappropriate for juniors in high school,and although it may be somewhat of a challenge, it is definetly worthwhile!
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Summary: No action. What kind of war book is this, no gore.
Review: Maybe I don't understand very moving literature, but I've read more exciting books than this, and yes we were assigned to read this book in a high school english class. The point on reading a book that took place in a Civil War period, is the behind the scenes of the war, hell. Gone with the Wind was even better than this. At least they told a good story about the life in the Confederacy. This story told more of farming, survival, and some sex ( don't get me wrong, I loved the slut scene) but slow never the less. If any one who would want to buy, or borrow this book. You must have a lot of time on your hands, because this book is not what you call a Civil war story.
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Summary: Cold Mountain almost perfect
Review: I'm a Junior in High School and we just finished reading Cold Mountain in our American Literature class. I went into it thinking it would be a typical high school book but, I ended up really enjoying it. I loved how it was a love story and adventure all wrapped up in one. All of both Ada and Inman's adventures kept my interest the entire time we were reading it. I didn't like the ending very much but, when I really think about it, it doesn't seem so bad. I wish Inman wouldn't have died but, if he wouldn't have, I can't figure out how it would've ended. I was also happy about Ruby getting together with Reid. I thought that part was so cute! Overall, I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to just about anyone. There's enough adventure to keep a guy interested and enough romance to keep the girls into it too.
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Summary: Cold Mounain combines entertainment with intellect.
Review: The tales of Ada and Inman are wonderful accounts of what really could have been the lives of two people during civil war times. Ada living by herself, and Inman running from the home guard. Throughout the book there was just enough foreshadowing to keep you interested in their reunion. Once they do meet everything seems as though it ends okay, but the ending surprised, I'm sure, everybody. Charles Frazier did a wonderful job tying everything together in a manner of mystical literature. It took me several times of reading the epilogue before I realized what really happened. Overall Cold Mountain was fun to read, entertaining, and educational. I would reccomend it highly to anyone
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Summary: Vivid Southern imagery, not much character depth.
Review: I was reminded of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, as I plodded through this slow moving, richly detailed story of a Confederate soldier's hiatus home toward the end of the civil war. Though the story-telling, language and attention to descriptive details are remarkable, especially for a first novel, one never gets to know the protagonist. For someone named Inman, he's not very introspective. You don' t worry too much about Inman, so the book is a pretty picture but is not engrossing. As for the relationship between Inman and his sweetheart back home, it's obvious that they hardly knew each other - boring. Also, Inman's thought of turning Yankee at the end was made without much contemplation, and seemed disingenuous to the character as well as to his former cause, even for the apathetic Outman. I hope the author develops the character of his protagonist and the ensuing relationships more in future works. Truly great literature might result.
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Summary: Somewhat Illuminating Walk, Ending Doesn't Stand 'n Deliver
Review: I read hard through the first half of this book. Mr. Frazier supplied some exquisitely described passages about the Carolina wilderness that made me want to know more. Sometimes I did have the feeling he was trying a little bit too hard and too long to get a description just right. His characters start out interesting but don't always stay that way. Inman, one of two main characters, is an intriguing fellow throughout the whole book. He is a Confederate deserter who is walking home to his beloved. His battle memories and thoughts on death and dying are haunting. Ada, the gal he is walking home to, starts off as an upstart addition to the local landscape and ends up as dull as a box of flat rocks. Ruby, the drifter that rescues Ada from a hand-to-mouth existence contemplating the universe from underneath a shrub niche carpeted with chicken droppings, is kind of a Blue Ridge Martha Stewart. She has a use for everything on the farm and shares this knowledge with the academic Ada. This exchange goes on for the whole book and gets stale. The ending of this book was a cop out. Quality fiction does not require a happy ending. It does, however, require an ending that has the main characters behaving in a believable fashion. Maybe Inman slipped and hit his noggin on a slippery piece of the Blue Ridge before the final showdown and Mr. Frazier forgot to share this with the readers. In addition to exquisite scenery descriptions, the book's strong points include the cast of nutballs that Inman meets on his journey home. They provide some scary and cautionary sidebar tales for the reader.
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Summary: Beautiful Detail; Interesting Plot; Dragged Out Occurences
Review: We are the first junior english class who has read "Cold Mountain" in the United States (Coventry High School-Akron, OH). As a class we had analyzed the living :-) out of the characters, and tried to understand why Ada would stand endlessly contemplating a crow or Inman studying his LeMat's pistol all the time. The Conclusion: Everything in this book is extremely symbolic. But Frazier has made the detail so incredible within it's papyrus that images jumped straight off the page and out in front of. Although he did drag out the wrong events at points: Overdescribing on minute things could have been amended a little, and I though he should have brought out the final battle atop Cold Mountain by Teague's party much more, and described in full the happenings there. I am a fierce fan of JRR Tolkien, and I tried to compare Cold Mountain to the Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. In some parts of CM I DID think that Tolkien might have influenced him a little. When he described the paths to be taken, or looking on the beautiful terrain ahead, he can pinpoint the 3D image with words like the late Tolkien. The ending: My lord, the ending. The way he uses (as well call it:) the "Evil White Space" near the end of the book tantalizes your senses and sends you ablaze with wonderment: "WHAT'S GOING ON? WHAT JUST HAPPENED?" and so he finishes in the epilogue with the eight plates.... Charles Frazier only himself could have thought up a scheme so intricate and so subtle to end the book. You readers will have to find out. It leaves space for every type of interpretation...make it what you will. A quote reading, "A scene of such quiet and peace that the observer on the ridge (reader, YOU) could avouch to it later in such a way as might lead those of GLAD TEMPERMENTS to imagine some conceivable history where long decades of happy union stretched before the two on the ground" says exactly how the reader should have a glad attitude towards the whole journey a! nd how that Inman's goal WAS acheived, despite the sad ending. But things in life happen that way...and it may have been symbolic that he didn't describe Ada's emotions towards his death, as Inman had seen so much death that he too had no emotion towards it..just an eerie thought. Thank You...It IS great book...that should probably be a nine up there.
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Summary: Soon to be required high school reading?
Review: This book doesn't fit in the category of one I'd usually go out and purchase -- the book was given to me as a gift. I found the first several chapters tedious and kept telling myself "it has to get better". Well, it did, but not because I was thoroughly engrossed by the story, but because I learned about a topic and era I wouldn't ordinarily explore. Not unlike the feeling I had after reading Lord of the Flies or A Separate Peace in high school.
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Summary: Fluff, and average fluff at that...
Review: I must admit a quick glance at the reviews on this forum would have sold me on Cold Mountain. However, further review of the forum's messages struck me as quite similar to reading the book itself -- I was confronted with an obvious attempt at sounding highfalutin, but there was little under the surface. The use of "trodding" as if it were a real verb or the teacher misspelling "tryst" clued me in to this book's potential audience just as the multiple exclamation points in reviews of shlock swords-and-sorcery novels shout "read me if you're under 15!!!" -- the overblown prose and sense of self-importance one finds in Cold Mountain make it a perfect fit for those who wouldn't deign to read bodice-rippers but, despite their professed interest in and yearning for more intelligent writing, are really just searching for the escapism that pulp fiction offers. Cold Mountain is indeed well-written, but hardly on the level of great literature. It is interesting, to some extent, but hardly riveting. My main complaint was a lack of depth -- depth of character, depth of plot, depth of thought. I never really felt I knew Inman or Ada and the book never really made me stop and think. And, yes, the ending was pathetic, grinding the book to a screeching halt when a well-wrought ending might actually have made the book worth a 7 or 8 for me. Instead, the author may as well have thrown up his hands and admitted defeat. All in all, not a bad read, but I challenge those who call it a classic to read the greats of American literature, or even modern authors like Irving, Updike, and their peers. Works of those writers are worthy of the title "literature" -- this isn't really that different from the mass-market fiction of Grisham and the rest. More descriptive, sure, but no deeper. A romance novel for the educated, Cold Mountain is a fairly enjoyable read, nothing more.
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