Rating: 
Summary: This audio version is not suited for automobile...
Review: I wish I could say wonderful things about this book. Others speak so highly of it. But when we tried to listen in the car during a long trip, we found Mr. Fazier's voice too soothing. His soft, Southern-accented voice may -- as others have noted in their reviews -- indeed suit the material. But it does not provide enough drama to be engaging on an interstate highway. So, drivers be warned. Select something a bit more dramatic if you're seeking diversion from highway monotony. This reading of a story about a journey may not be the best choice to accompany you on your journey.
Rating: 
Summary: They God! What a book!
Review: I got this book for my wife for Christmas because I wanted her to learn more about my native North Carolina and, since it was described as a powerful romance, I figured she would read it. The Civil War side of it also attracted me to it. In our interests we are pretty much generic male and female.I got more than I bargained for. My wife's first reaction as she began to get into the book was how beautifully written, how artful, how powerful it was. Then I noticed that as she got nearer to the end reading time began to intrude into time when she was supposed to be doing something else. She couldn't put it down until she had finished. I picked it up as soon as she was done and enjoyed it at least as much as she did. The story starts a little slowly, but it gets more interesting with every page. In addition to the unexpected literary quality, what struck me was the authenticity of the characters in their manner of speech and behavior as well as the loving picture that Mr. Frazier paints of their hardscrabble, close-to-nature existence. Many of the expressions I heard from my older relatives as a boy I saw on the printed page here for the first time. My father's paternal grandfather from the North Carolina foothills fought in Lee's army and was eventually captured at The Wilderness. His maternal grandfather, from the same region, according to family legend hid out in the mountains during the war and later served as a legislator in the carpetbag government in Raleigh. One of my father's earliest recollections, he told me, was listening to these two grandfathers arguing politics. Now I think I know a lot more about what they must have gone through in this very trying time. Thank you, Charles Frazier.
Rating: 
Summary: A beautiful study of pain and loss
Review: It is a shame that Cold Mountain was pitched as a Civil War novel because those who came to the book expecting either the battle focus of The Killer Angels or the Old South of Gone With The Wind were bound to be disappointed. Instead, Charles Frazier has written a book about that war's human cost, told in the form of one couple, torn apart and in the process of trying to come back together. Descriptive and slow in presentation - as Inman, the chief protagonist, walks his long journey home to Cold Mountain - the book allows us to absorb the effects of war as Inman and his love experience and remember them. For some of us, this was a wonderful and rewarding experience. Cold Mountain may or may not be a 'great' book, but it deserves better than a simple dismissal for failing to deliver excitement in a predicatable form.
Rating:
Summary: That's why they call it "literature"
Review: At first, the all-over-the-map reviews kept me from diving into this book. I admit it was a slow start, but eventually it dawned on me that it had been years since I had read a work of literature. We're so used to instant gratification and having everything spelled out or dumbed down for us. (When Oprah Winfrey was having a tough time with "Beloved," Toni Morrison's response was "That's why they call it literature, my dear.") Once I settled into that groove, I thoroughly enjoyed the prose . . . the characters . . . and the non-Hollywood ending.
Rating:
Summary: A great spectaculer novel
Review: I think this was a great novel to read. Frazier wrote a novel that will make Edgar Allen Poe look like a DUNCE. So if people like books with passion and feeling, then this is a book to get. And believe me, it feels like you are in the novel if you are reading alone.
Rating:
Summary: Like losing a friend
Review: I have to admit that I did not immediately fall in love with this book. In fact, I picked it up and re-started it a week after deciding that I was not going to enjoy it, and would not finish it. Once, I got into the stories being told, I was hooked. To me, it compares favorably to the likes of "Killer Angels", "Andersonville" and "Gone With The Wind" as works of Civil War era fiction. When I finished it, I felt a real twinge of sadness, not only for the way the story itself ends, but also that I was done with it, and would now have to leave these "people" behind. That to me is a guage of how much I enjoy a book. Give this book a chance to grow on you.
Rating:
Summary: Don't be dissuaded
Review: While the book is a work of art for a mature mind, it isn't even close to being high brow. Frazier challenges a little with the period vocabulary, but therein is the period captured brilliantly. His poetical writing style also fits the period like a glove. Absolutely a beautiful book. Go for it.
Rating:
Summary: God is in the details
Review: I had readers block when I picked up this novel, and having read a few reviews judging Fraziers style to be overly descriptive, I doubted that this novel would be the one to help me break through my block. I read it practically straight through. The story and the characters are solidly drawn, although not extraordinary. But his language of description is extraordinarily beautiful in it's simplicity. Some of the most beautiful (and economical) writing I've ever read.
Rating:
Summary: The trees used in printing this book did not die in vain.
Review: I rank this with my all-time favorites "Great Expectations" and "To Kill a Mockingbird." This book is art. It vividly gives life to a hard, mostly agrarian time that I can only wonder at. Grossly divorced from nature, most of us today are breathtakingly incapable of living off the land. How appalled Inman and Ruby, from a self-reliant, make-do world, would be at the pathetic, weakling victim culture of today-they would barely recognize it as the same country. Sadly, war is as timeless as ever. Thank you Charles Frazier for giving us a stunning look at a much more stoic, though tragically flawed, America.
Rating:
Summary: UNREADABLE AND UNINTERESTING
Review: I found this book PAINFUL to read. The author's style is incoherent. Unlike some who's reviews I have read, I did not HAVE to read this book. I chose to. What a mistake -- and no one to blame but myself (and the so-called "critics" who loved this mess). It's almost as if Charles Frazier intentionally made this book difficult to read. Right down to characters with outrageous names. My only hope for all of mankind is that the author's first novel is also his last. No stars.
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