Cold Mountain

Rating:
Summary: Is that all there is?
Review: How can Mr. Frazier craft his words so well yet say so little for so long about nothing. My expectations ran high after reading endless reviews of praise for Mr. Frazier's first novel, however, after plodding through the first 100 pages, it occurred to me that it is difficult to like a book when you simply don't like any of the characters. Ada is weak albeit much more interesting than Inman, but where is the late night, can't put down page turner I was anticipating? I cannot understand all the critical acclaim for this vapid piece of work, but I guess that's why there's chocolate and vanilla. I would not recommend this as a great read, a good read or even an okay read but a "read at your own risk" type of read. Buyer beware!

Rating:
Summary: A well researched term paper
Review: Cold Mountain is a very well written book, but it takes more than writing to make a great book. It takes a good story. While this concept sounds great on the jacket of the book, in reality it comes off as quickly thought out, poorly planned and executed. There is not a bit of real character development, save for a few ancillary paragraphs thrown in here and there. The characters are all cold people that are very flat, unfeeling, and that a reader can't really care about. Not that you have to love a character, but there is no kind of feeling about you can develop about them. To call this book a "Civil War Classic" is to do a great disservice to authors like Foote and Shaara. They researched the war, whereas Frazier did some very deep research on the nuances of everyday life. I learned nothing of the history, but everything and more than I wanted to about curing a ham, harvesting apples and sleeping in a bed of hay. But even those were uninteresting over the course of a 300 page book. Plus, there are dozens of readers and anthologies of the people and times of the war that had the same information and anectdotes, without a poor love story wrapped around it.

Rating:
Summary: Cold Mountain is a relentlessly good read.
Review: This story rings so true -- the characters believable and at the same loveable. I've never been too interested in accounts of battles, but these were riveting as were the tales within the book of the people of those times. The sense of place and descriptions of the Blue Ridge Mountain area make you wish you could know and love your home place so well.

Rating:
Summary: The best book I have read in a very long time!
Review: The smell of the wet leaves, the taste of cornmeal mush, the chill of a North Carolina autumn dusk, the sight of a scarecrow wearing a mauve dress. I felt that I was there. I felt lonely, hungry, tired, hot, cold, in pain, and in great sorrow. And, for a fleeting moment, happy.

Rating:
Summary: Destined to Become a Classic
Review: This novel is simply fantastic! I just finished Cold Mountain after spending 12 of my last 24 hours with it (with an 8 hour interlude to go to the office). I did not find it a slow read as did so many others, but a complex piece of literature that requires a little more effort than the average populist novels published today. As a lover of the classics, Frazier gives me hope that we still can produce authors who can create work at that higher plane. His loving descriptions of the mountain environment and surroundings add that next dimension to a very real story that builds as we delve deeper into the book. To be sure, this is not a book that will be popular with those who have become used to the "satisfy me now" culture that has evolved. But for those of us who like good stories wrapped in intelligent language, Cold Mountain is a masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: a beautiful, gorgeous, put-you-to-sleep, nappy-time nothing
Review: I liked this book. Honestly. It was beautifully written, a stunning piece of lush prose, bounching around and making the rest of us feel a little inadequte. I have no problem with all the praise and wonder people have bestowed upon this book. Mr. Frazier really can work those words into a maze of lovely intent and shattering sorrow. But . . . Cutting away from all the literary bravara and ultimately showpiecemeal, there really are some long, boring passages that say absolutely nothing other than describing a breathtaking landscape and make the reader feel like they are there, breathing in that 1864 North Carolina mountain air. This is all well and good, but after setting up what appears to be a story in the first, oh say 80 pages, we are shut off from the narrative and dive deeper and deeper into one of the author's obvious passions. I understand that he lived somewhere around where the action takes place and that's fine too, but a novel is ultimately about the story and after a while you're bound to get bored. The story runs away from itself, hackneyed, second-rate encounters with stereotypes and dull, endless travelogue sequences make most of the middle portion of this novel irrelevent. I'm not criticizing this aspect per se, but with all I'd heard of this novel, I expected something a little more. The first part of the book had me geared, ready to cry along with all the horror and tragedy this dilapidated universe has rampaged through these poor people's lives, but then the mountains took over, the title came through as the key, main character and there really, in the end, isn't much one can attribute to a mountain other than smokey, barren skies and natural beauty. That I think sums up this book: a beautiful, timeless box wrapped with the most pain-staking care, something so lovely you don't even want to open it, fearing desicration. But, your friend has gone through all this effort, has worked so long and hard to make this gift special to show you how much they care, how hard they worked to make you happy, so you open it, gently unfold that crisp, golden paper, and inside you find something you never really wanted, a boring present with no use that is brittle and sour and destined for that forgotten space up high in the coat closet, possibly wrapped back up with much less care sometime in the future to give to your sister's third husband as a separate gift at their wedding.

Rating:
Summary: "What if they had a war and no one came" senario
Review: Cold Mountain is an excellent book for those who have not explored the history of the Civil War (War between the States). However, I found sections of the book leaving me wanting more; more action, more emotion, more something that left me feeling vacant. I did find it interesting how Frazier developed the characters, yet I felt I did more thinking about their strengths and weaknesses than he did. I would recommend this book, but I appreciate the wordship of authors such as Baraba Kingsolver more than Fraizer.

Rating:
Summary: Good but somewhat over-rated!
Review: I had read two reviews of Cold Mountain before I read the book; both raved about Frazier's use of period and regional language. Upon reading the book, I felt that he tried *too* hard to capture the language. Then I thought that Frazier obviously put a lot of work into his book -- but if it is obvious to an amateur like me, maybe something is wrong. I rated it six because it surely is better than the average trash published today AND because I too long for the Blue Ridge Mountains. I could relate to Inman's longing. It was in my top five books of 1997.

Rating:
Summary: It's a love story, alrighty, but not between two people.
Review: Having savored the beautiful prose and chill tragedy of Cold Mountain, I was curious to read other Amazon reader reviews. Those who didn't like it appear to have been in search of a fast-paced Civil War/love story. Those who embraced it as fully as I do appear to comprehend the real object of Inman's desire, and the true source of Ada's strength: the mountain itself. Anyone whose heart is drawn toward the Blue Ridge, anyone who never really left those mountains of North Carolina, can comprehend the depth of yearning. To place the truly inhuman realities of the Civil War behind you is to be pushed and pulled with accelerating speed. Frasier managed to force this pace on the reader--to insist on a spoken cadence until Inman could actually see those mountains, and then to impel one forward, faster and faster, without sustinence, until the agonies of the visions of war and hatred finally broke like a wave on the mountain's flanks. To those readers who missed the love object the first time through: visit the Blue Ridge, climb those mountains for a while, and reread the book. You, too, will come away changed.

Rating:
Summary: An outstanding effort!
Review: Having been badly burned recently in buying something that was - inexplicably - an award-winner, I was a bit hesitant about Cold Mountain, but the cover (really!) drew me in - and I'm not sorry. I found this book a wonderful slow read. The descriptions were evocative (both the beauty of nature and the degree to which man can destroy that beauty). I thought Frazier did a tremendous job in communicating the lengths a person will go to to survive - and in Inman's case, to get home. I really felt his absolute determination. I love hiking and being in the mountains, and while Inman endures an unbearable loneliness during his trek, I also felt a great sense of peace as he journeyed through those many forests and hills.