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Summary: Some books are for discussing
Review: This one isn't. It's for reading and pondering. Read all the other reviews and dust jacket or cut to the chase and read the book. You won't be sorry.
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Summary: Enjoyable! Refreshing!
Review: If you are going to read the reviews as to whether you should buy the book or not, buy it! If you are a reader of fiction, this will be a story worthy to add to your collection at the very least and causes a refreshing view of our present world in contrast to the times reflected in the book. Are we better off or were we?
A great story with all the elements...
You should read it!
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Summary: Going against the grain...
Review: I know "Cold Mountain" has won awards and the Amazon.com customer ratings are very high. Even my wife liked it. I wish I had the same experience. I found little pleasure in the book and in retrospect wish I never started it. The first third was quite good. Many interesting characters and incidents. Then it started a downward slope all the way to the end. The journey became tiresome, the new characters decidedly less interesting, and the incidents repetitive and bland. I would not recommend this book to anyone. Sign me Disappointed in VA
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Summary: Don't compare this to
Review: First, I'll start with the positive. I savor language and I love 19th century language. I didn't need to use a dictionary or thesaurus, and the few words that I didn't know (which were usually gadgets) could be guessed from context. The language in this book is luscious. I also savor description, especially of Nature, so it was a treat to read about the land in its great and wonderful variety, as well as the working of a 19th century farm. The descriptions of people and of war were excellent too. I give it 5 stars for language.
Despite the wonderful language, it did start to be TOO luscious, like an overload of calories. The sensory detail was so precise and lush that it took a long time to get through each sentence, especially due to my reading habits (savoring words, images). I am not one to appreciate pulp action thrillers and all those "beach reading" books that flush American bookstands, and people read like they eat junk food. I don't demand that a book have a million twists and turns of plot, but I do appreciate a well-crafted plot. In this book you can't "see the forest for the trees" (and for the moss and the lichen and the bugs under logs, etc.) The writer needs to be selective rather than slathering on the adjectives and the minutiae of every sight, sound, and smell.
What galls me about this book is the lack of real dramatic thrust. In principle, the idea is great-the deserter trying to get back to his lover and to the security of a world he understands during a time of horror. But I found Inman to be an idiot. I lost respect for him as a character early on when he didn't get rid of Veasey and then when he went to the crooked house and let people feed him some liquor so that he was smashed when the Home Guard showed up and took him. I think if there were a real dramatic thrust, a real urgency, he would not have been so casual about wandering into the maws of danger or about keeping company with people who only distracted him from his purpose. While other of his adventures seemed plausible and didn't make him seem an unworthy protagonist, these two just mentioned (and they were among the first) destroyed the possibility of my investing any more emotion in this character. Of course, there should be obstacles (desire vs.obstacle = conflict), and a good story has conflict. But even with all his adventures/obstacles, there didn't seem to be a real conflict in terms of his desire to get home. I didn't feel he had a strong desire to get home, even though the writer kept saying he did.
The worst thing about this novel is that the author does too much "telling" and not enough "showing." He doesn't use enough dialogue. He mostly tells the stories in reported speech, often using the past perfect tense. Some good scenes with some strong dramatic dialogue would have greatly improved the novel. It would have gotten us into the drama of the story instead of having us just sit by the fireside listening to a storyteller spin yarns.
I find it appalling that people compare this to Don Quixote. Don Quixote never swerved from his desire to redress the world's wrongs and to find Dulcinea. His adventures were dramatically thrust upon him in his quest, whereas Inman just wanders into some bad situations through imprudence and lack of conviction. So maybe he's shell-shocked, fine, but for dramatic rigor he needs to be more driven by his purpose-getting home and to Ada.
I think the quotes on the book jacket are very revealing about the state of the literary arts these days. We don't even expect our award-winning books to be called literature anymore. One quote says, "As close to a masterpiece as American writing is going to come these days." (Raleigh News & Observer). Well, that's a sad and sorry state of affairs. We don't even expect to produce masterpieces. Newsweek is a little more optimistic with " . . . a genuinely romantic saga that attains the status of literature." But there's still something hesitant in the way they say this. I think all the winning books in fiction and literature categories SHOULD BE literature.
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Summary: This is the best book I've read in 5 years! "Loved" it!
Review: This is the first book in five years of my frequent reading that I actually can say I "loved reading". It is rare for me to find a book that has such beautiful phrasing, powerful use of words, and stunning descriptions of the landscapes (both natural and human) that I want to read phrases, sentences, and whole paragrahs over and over again, just to feel them in my mouth and in my brain. But Charles Frazier is a wonderful writer and Cold Mountain is a superb book for readers who truly love language, richly-rendered characters, and enjoy probing nature's mysterious power over our lives.It is unfortunate that several members of our book club did not like this book enough to stay with it past the first few chapters. They wrote it off as being "too dark" a story. Too bad they didn't get to see the many shades of multi-colored light that this unforgetable story and the unforgetable writing brought to me. I just bought another copy (since the last person I loaned my first copy to hasn't returned it yet) and plan to reread it again in the coming months. I look forward to Mr. Frazier's next novel!
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Summary: Great - But A Horrible & Tragic Ending :-(
Review: A year ago, I had to read the book for ENGL 1101. I like the book somewhat, but I don't care much for ending, too tragic. The begining was somewhat gross and down right depressing. The story goes on, and Inman decides to go back to Ada. Beasley, a fallen preacher, that is funny and entertaining in a twisted way. Ruby's Father is a riot. He is a character that causes a conflict in the reader's mind because you almost hate him but begin to love him. There are a couple more good character like Sally, Esco, Goat Lady, and a big hooker that shoots Beasley. Watchout for the Home Guard and Teague that play a big part in the end. Mr. Charles Frazier utilizes a lot of sophiscated literary devices. He has Ada and Ruby reading books throughout the novel that are intresting and important to the novel. The setting plays a huge part in the novel, too. I have a bone to pick with Mr. Frazier about the ending. I thought that the ending was inadequate, predictable, and unfitting for a novel of such high quality. I think thats why most people are not giving it five stars, and there are conflicting opinions concerning the book. A better ending would have sealed the deal. If your too lazy to read the book, there is a movie coming out starring several good actors. I don't know how good it will be, but it should be interesting. By the way, Charles Frazier has just recently closed a deal for his next that is going to be about a Native American (Indian) Chief in the same region. Advice: I would suggest that you buy it or check it out from the library. You could end up reading some other [bad] book and waste your valuable reading time, or you could read this book that is good and makes for good conversation. Plus, you'll have a heads up on the up-coming movie, and you can say that cliche "I read the book. I thought the book was better". Chances are that you will like the novel. Charles Frazier could be the next Great Southern Writer in the long line of Great Sourthern Writers. This is a *** good novel, and it will take your mind off all the crazy [stuff] that is going on in Middle East and etc.
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Summary: Cold Mountain with a warm heart.
Review: Set against a historical backdrop of the Civil War, Charles Frazier's award-winning novel follows a wounded Confederate soldier's "long journey home" (p. 432) from the battlefields of Petersburg to the woman he loves in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. Disillusioned with fighting for the Confederacy, and feeling as empty "as the core of a big black-gum tree" (p. 22), Inman deserts the war from his hospital bed and begins walking home to 6030-foot Cold Mountain. "His spirit," Inman feared, "had been blasted away so that he had become lonesome and estranged from all around him as a sad old heron standing pointless watch in the mudflats of a pond lacking frogs" (p. 22). Cold Mountain "soared in his mind as a place where all his scattered forces might gather" (p. 23). With parallels aplenty to Homer's Greek epic, Inman's odyssey is filled with tribulations. Along the "hard road" (p. 131) home to the woman he loves (Ada), Inman encounters a ruined preacher, thugs, slaves, a goatwoman, gypsies, a lonely young widow, vicious dogs and bears. Part travel adventure and part love story, Frazier's 449-page novel actually follows two journeys: Inman's walk through mountain country, and Ada's inner journey of self-discovery. The novel finds both characters at an age when they "stood on a cusp. They could think in one part of their minds that their whole lives stretched out before them without boundary or limit. At the same time another part guessed that youth was about over for them and what lay ahead was another country entirely, wherein the possibilities narrowed down moment by moment" (p. 434). Inman's Penelope is Ada, the delicate daughter of a Charleston preacher who, like Homer's heroine, is forced to learn survival skills in an uncertain world. "All in all," Frazier tells us as Ada sits on her porch, reading Homer aloud, "not much had altered in the way of things despite the passage of a great volume of time" (p. 140). Later while reading ADAM BEDE, we find Ada wondering "if literature might lose some of its interest when she reached an age or state of mind where her life was set on such a sure course that the things she read might stop seeming so powerfully like alternate directions for her being" (p. 328). Later still while reading poetry, Ada discovers that, at least now and again, just saying what your heart felt, straight and simple and unguarded, could be more useful than four thousand lines of John Keats. She had never been able to do it in her whole life, but she thought she would like to learn how" (p. 344). I've never met a mountain that didn't move me, and Frazier's beautiful novel is no exception. It is a COLD MOUNTAIN with a warm heart. G. Merritt
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Summary: Took My Breath Away
Review: A truly original work that is poetic, visceral and hearbreakingly beautiful on its own merit. Thank you Charles Frazier for sharing your gift to bring us such a poignant and eloquent work of art.
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Summary: I read this a year ago.....
Review: and I can't remember a thing about it. I have a dim recollection that it contained two very boring characters that Hollywood would probably have played by Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts and that it seemed a lot like a romance novel in disguise.
I picked it up because I loved Ken Burns Civil War and books like Lonesome Dove and I thought as I began that it was a little bit of a combination of these, but as I went on I kept visualizing a picture of Fabio appearing on the cover.
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Summary: Wonderful, poetry
Review: Started this book a while ago and didn't seem interested in it but decided to try it again for a book discussion group reading. I am so glad that I picked it up again as it is pure poetry and a wonderfully written book. Totally not boring. Give it a chance. I agree with previous reviewer - this book does not deserve a 3 1/2 star rating as it is much better than that.
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