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Summary: To anyone who is interested. . .
Review: To anyone who is intersted, there is going to be a film made from the book. It will be direscted by Anthony Minghella (director of the English Patient). All I can say is its going to be one hell of a movie!
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Summary: I am stunned that so many people praise this book highly.
Review: I am stunned that so many people bought this book. I started it soon after it came out and put it aside after 70 pages. I started over this spring and read the whole thing. It did not move me or reveal much at all about life except that the Civil War has been exhausted as a subject for fiction. I found Ada an especially boring character topped only by the stupidity of Ruby. Nothing about Ada would compel a man like Inman to return to her. He would have been better off dying a hero in battle than an outlier returning to such a miserable weakling as Ada. I fully expect that Charles Frazier will laugh all the way to the bank as he and his agent have put one over on the American public.
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Summary: I was disappointed in the book, which had been so praised.
Review: Because the book was so highly acclaimed, even by some of my friends, I waited on the list for months to get a chance to read it. How disappointing. I felt that the only explanation of the actions of the characters and the way they were described could be that the narrative was actually of a dream: that a some point, someone would wake up and the real story would unfold. The characters met on the journey were just not real people. I did force myself to read the whole book!
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Summary: Frazier's Cold Mountain uses understatement as Heminngway di
Review: I don't think it is just because I am currently explaining to my college students Hemingway's use of understatement as a dramatic device that I see it in Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain. It's there: long, detailed narrative that actually describes something beyond the narrative. I think his ending is magnificient: a happy ending, but reasonably and realistically so.
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Summary: Something forever new under the sun
Review: COLD MOUNTAIN
by Charles Frazier
To paraphrase a great Civil War leader, COLD MOUNTAIN is such a gem of a book that it is far above our poor power to add or detract. That said, I will still put in my two cents' worth. There is indeed an abundance--perhaps a surfeit--of poetry in the writer's keen prose.Yes, some may quibble about anachronisms. If they exist for the purist, they do not lessen the ultimate impact of this book. All newscasts, all encyclopedias, contain blunders, as do the Scriptures themselves. This does not invalidate them. Overall, the author's research is matchless. COLD MOUNTAIN exudes surpassing grace in the face of hovering doom. While their world is collapsing, people still persevere; they still try to run a farm or feel beholden to feed a hungry itinerant; they still try to walk away from an increasingly pointless war; they still try to go back to a beloved home, or whatever remains of it. The story is set during the wholesale affray in the South of the 1860s, but its simple rusticity makes its message about the futility of war ageless. This dogged determination of the human spirit is not a "hurrah" kind of celebration It is dispassionate, incidental. Yet there is haunting poignancy in Inman's observation that a plant is actually greening again in the midst of all the chaos, just as it always has during normal years. Symbolically, Inman's guidebook on his pathway leading him away from the war, his dog-eared copy of Bartram's Travels, was written by a Quaker, a man of an appropriately peace-loving denomination. (The concern with the minutiae of flora and fauna is typically Victorian and just one of many subtle ways Frazier evokes the era Ditto the fascination with Darwinism, clashing though it does with that ol' time religion.) The picaresque overtones in the deserting soldier's journey, such as Inman's rising from a virtual grave, belie the ending of this tale.But since the protagonist of the picaresque is notoriously amoral and indestructible, Inman's emancipation by way of Ada's love is a foreshadowing of his demise. He must die if he chooses to be saved. Ada and Inman are archetypal characters, like the gods of the ancients. These gods were notoriously fertile. Whenever intimacy occurred, progeny ensued. Accordingly, Inman's and Ada's single coupling bears fruit: a daughter to perpetuate her father's seed. The old Ada nearly could not bring herself to kiss Inman goodbye, but the new Ada climbs into bed with him. Even so, this act takes place up in the unfettered green world of Cold Mountain, a world to Inman that means "home". Such regeneration cannot unfold back within the civilized strictures of Ada's farm. Ada, with Inman watching by the firelight, doffs her father's dungarees (which, significantly, she had donned for the first time). Less is more: Frazier sketches the scene with a crackling understatement (a trait very unlike Greek theatre) that acutely accentuates the erotic. Personally, I would have liked more mirth in the book. Frazier is capable of levity but the absurdity of war does not move him to smile very often. There is such a fine line between tragedy and comedy that it surprises me he was not tempted to cross it more often. His readers instead must merely settle for a splendid, nearly perfect book. (Based on the hardcover edition, 1997.)
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Summary: A Civil War Odyssey
Review: Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain is the Civil War era cousin of Homer's legendary Odyssey. The two literary works share both a strikingly similar plot and a colossal share of critical acclaim. This year's Pulitzer Prize winner is the tale of a Confederate deserter's journey back to his home in the majestic Blue Ridge Appalachian range. Frazier, in his first novel, captures masterfully the essence of mid-19th century Confederate America using a Southern prose style which can best be described as sublime. A native of the South Carolina mountains, he combines his gifts as a knowledgeable historian, brilliant author, and childhood recipient of a number of juicy Civil War tales passed down by his great grandfather. The most unique and intriguing feature of Cold Mountain is its romantic, yet diligently researched portrayal of an America so vastly different from the one we know today. The wild brawls, gun fights, lawlessness, bartering, and general "fend for yourself" attitude of the period both shocks and excites the contemporary American who realizes his society was as such no more than 150 years ago. Also, Frazier does not hesitate to douse his novel with explicit scenes of violence and sensuality so that even the most captious of readers will be lured by Cold Mountain's intensity. He cools down the high-speed spice by taking full swan dives into the pool of profound, where he grapples with a number of philosophical issues including love, death, nationalism, and the human experience in general. Cold Mountain is a rich, entertaining, and high quality work of literature which I recommend to all.
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Summary: Beauty is in the spoken word
Review: The use of the English language rose to new heights in this novel. I have never enjoyed a book as much from the standpoint of the use of similes and metaphores. This is the first time that I considered turning around and reading the book all over again. Definitely in the catagory of Pat Conroy. A true delight and destined to become an American classic.
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Summary: Cold Mountain
Review: What an outstanding book. Highly recommended! I have learned more about humanity from within this book than in a long time. Inman and Ada, our fixtures in this book set more than a hundred years ago, are both fully developed as the story progresses. Both start out as emptiness personified and complete the book so fullfilled yet still empty, ala the very human dilemma of fulfillment; how to achieve it if ever possible to define it. A slight caution, what may seem to be pointless scatter-prose in the beginning is a strong foundation for our subsequent characters.
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Summary: Wonderful Book
Review: Cold Mountain has only two flaws: the ending and the fact that it alternates from gorgeous, splendid, magnificent writing to merely gorgeous, splendid writing. It's quite unlike anything I have ever read before, extraordinarily well-researched, lyrical, beautiful, you can touch the snow and taste the coldness of the creek water. I often find myself thinking about it even though it's been three months and nine other books since I read it. My great-grandmother, who lived in the same general area, was 20 years old at the end of the Civil War. Like Ada, she too was educated, came from a well-to-do family and also had to wait until the end of the war before she could be with her betrothed. My great-grandparents' story end differently but but reading Ada's story made me taught me a great deal about what daily life must have been like for my great-grandmother.
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Summary: Moving Story
Review: I do not know if Charles Frazier is a good writer, as I am not a writing critic. But I do know that his story moved me and that I still think about it. I think about Inman alot, how he suffered on his walk home, of how he never gave up on his dream of going home and of finding out if Ada returned his affection. I loved the story of the Shining Rocks. Perhaps that is really where Inman belongs given his experiences at war and in his long walk home. Most of all, I admired Ruby for her knowledge of her world of seasons and of growing things. She was a true student of nature and she charted her path in accordance with the movements of the universe. It makes my every day seem so artificial. I think about this book the most when I run in the hills. Like Ruby I acknowlege the power of the mountain. I go slowly, looking at the trees and plants around me, and I take it one switch back at a time. And when I reach the top I think about the Shining Rocks and that other world where we can go if only we believe. Remarkable.
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