Rating: 
Summary: A dark journey to find humanity and peace
Review: A captivating tale, I was content to be ignorant of the hype and reviews, but having finished the book, I felt a great discomfort with the ending and needed to come to terms with it. Was it a cop-out ending like the Horse Wisperer where the protagonist was "run over" by the proverbial truck, where it seemed that the author had written himself into a corner? How could one who is able to regain his humanity be done in by the same? So, having read as many reader comments as I cared to, I am coming to the conclusion that an unsettling ending has it's own message. The author has taken us on another journey--not Inman's, not Ada's, but our own and questioning our own regard of hope and effort and putting it in context with our view of the world and then transforming that view. The ending in regards to Inman, was implied but very clear in its meaning. And if we were unable to fathom something good from the inevitable ending, then the epiloge stated it clearly in women as the symbol for optimism and hope for the future. (So where does that leave men?)Cold Mountain was rich in words, to be savored and its verbal images hung on the wall. The tales were great and the detail of nature seemed accurate, and when I had an issue with that late summer bear cub I found the anomaly significant to the story. I really enjoyed the natural imagery and that gave me my identity with the story. Cold mountain will linger long after the pages are done turning.
Rating:
Summary: Meets my criteria for good, if not great literature.
Review: This book was one of the best I've read in a long time. I can't remember many books that made me sit up and say "oh wow!" like "Cold Mountain" did ("What's Bred in the Bone" comes to mind). These days, with my workload, I usually look for the so-called quick read- the diversion from the day-to-day- SF mostly. Two weeks after reading them, I'm often hard-pressed to remember what they were all about. This book was different. I happened to be taking a long weekend with some time on my hands and decided to buy this book and find out what the fuss was all about. What I found was a book that transported me to another time, another place, and another mindset. I couldn't put the book down, and made the time to finish it. This book worked on many levels, for me. The writing was polished. I appreciated the point of view. My antecedents and my wife's are from Brazil, Poland, Russia, Czecholslovakia and, oh yes, Ohio, and I grew up in New England. My viewpoint is decidedly urban and Yankee. Yet I was able to empathize with a decidedly rural and Southern point of view. I found myself mourning for a lost way of life almost as much as Mr. Frazier seems to. Isn't that what good literature is all about?
Rating: 
Summary: A wonderful book, full of haunting images and people.
Review: This book was exceptional. I enjoyed the Lyrical quality of his prose. Frazier puts the reader into the thoughts of the characters with his descriptive narative. I enjoyed being shown rather than being told. One crticism: the characters themselves were better developed than their realtionship. It was as if there romance was woven into the story to justify the importance of following these two lives. Frazier was in no hurry in telling his tale. I do admit, I was at first waiting for something to "happen". Then, at about midway, I let myself be taken in with the narrative and enjoyed the day to day doings of Aida and Inman. I would recomend this to anyone who enjoys savoring a good book.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Amazing!
Review: I just finished the book and all at once my heart is aching and I am taken by the fact that I just read a truly great work. Frazier's characters were so simple, so REAL that it was hard to do anything but become swept up into the story with them. I enjoyed the lack of conversation and quotation marks. It was so much more stimulating and heart wrenching to get a glimpse of their thought processes! I'll recommend this book to anyone who will listen to me!
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, evocative, engrossing. Gorgeous writing!
Review: I cannot possibly heap sufficient praise on this novel. While like many, I found it a tad difficult for the first few chapters, once I was hooked there was no letting go. The language is enthralling, the story heartbreaking and inspiring. I wished I could go back 150 years and experience for myself this simple, challenging, and real sort of life, tough as it was. I am disheartened to see the number of people who pronounced this book dull or boring. I imagine those who did find John Grisham the height of literary excellence (choke). I am sorry for them, really, that they do not have what it takes to see the beauty in this book. Yes, looked at from one extremely narrow perspective, it's chapter after chapter of people simply trying to get a meal... but it is so much more beautiful and satisfying than that. Please, give it try. Open yourself to its charms and you won't be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: too modern a sensibility
Review: Although I liked the evocative descriptions, I never for one minute believed I was listening to the thoughts of 19th century people. Frazier made a tremendous effort to make the characters sound like people from that time, but gave them modern sentiments to express. A disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: Day to day life during the Civil War must have been boring!
Review: A friends wife told me to stick with it and I would enjoy this book. "About halfway throught it gets interesting" - Wrong. Too much detail about the same things: Inman - hungry. Ada - working. Slow and boring. Nothing happens.
Rating:
Summary: An extraordinary journey into literary fiction!
Review: Cold Mountain is the story of a confederate infantryman, Inman, and Aida, an unlikely farmer. These two initially incomplete people meet and fall in love just at the dawn of the American Civil War. As the adolescent nation's viability is threatened, so is the budding passion of these two young lovers. The story opens with Inman, a confederate army infantryman, waking up in a hospital room set up as a temporary infirmary for the "sure to die soon". Thought to be mortally wounded in the neck by a stray ball he acquired during the battle of Fredericksburg, his wound is literally spitting out bits and pieces of battle shrapnel. Having witnessed men he barely knows dying from wounds not to dissimilar from his own, he sees the soldiers that do survive get sent back to the front lines of battle. Realizing now that his own survival is becoming a viable notion, Inman decides that he has had enough of a war he no longer believes in and makes the remorseless decision to go home. Four years have passed since one of Inman's five senses has affirmed Aida's existence. With torturously vivid memories of battle shredding away at his disposition, he is worried that a cynicism has overcome his heart and he has lost the ability to be happy, and thereby offer happiness to the girl he loves and hopes is still home waiting for his return. Inman is a literate man who rations unambiguous words. From a vantage point that Dante himself could not have imagined, Inman's heart has turned non-partisan while remaining amazingly moral. The juxtaposition works well here and serves to strengthen Inman's appeal to the reader. After a quick, but well thought out day's preparation, Inman embarks on foot into the interiors of North Carolina, toward his home and life's well spring. Traveling through the wintering landscapes of mountain and plain pits Inman against obstacles both human and inhumane. His formable instincts for survival and his un-denying capacity to be compassionate are in constant state of conflict, knowing that like a hang man's noose dangling inches from his face, an act of kindness has the potential of turning into an irrevocable death sentence. Aida, our heroine begins her odyssey of survival and rebirth from an opposite station in life that has left her with a toddler's competence to deal with life's unforeseen turns. Following the advice of a physician, Aida and her father, Monroe moved from Charleston to Cold Mountain before the outbreak of war for the benefit of curtailing his advancing consumption. Monroe's thriving import business and steady flow of cash rendered the purchased farm as a mere amusement, having a resident couple do the work, while he and his daughter continue their life of comfort and culture. Brought up among the southern gentry of 19th century society, Aida is left unrehearsed in the skills of domestic life, let alone producing sustenance from the farm she now inadvertently occupies alone since her father's unexpected death. To make matters worse, Monroe's trade business has ceased its viability and the help that tended the farm has deserted her. With her father dead for four months, and the war raging for better than four years, we find Aida in the throws of starvation, having eaten through any stores of food that were around upon his death. Despondent and disparate, Aida enters into a pact of survival with a local mountain girl named Ruby. They agree to work the farm together and equally, share evenly in all that is produced, but by Ruby's own insistence, Aida will live in the main house, Ruby in the worker's dwelling. Even though Ruby makes it clear that she is no servant, she seems to revel in the irony of appearing as one. Over time, Aida grows to admire and love Ruby as a sister. From Ruby she acquires the skills of self-sufficiency and learns to draw a lasting satisfaction from her daily routine of physical labor. As the story progresses, Aida is transformed into a woman of self-sufficiency and independence. A rare female quality in that day. Ruby's hardened persona is gradually worn away by Aida's kind and accommodative nature, eventually learning to forgive her long delinquent father, Stobbard. The story shifts back and forth between Aida's relationship with Ruby as they work and master the Monroe's farm, and Inman's peregrination back to Aida, the beacon he has set his life's sextant on. By the time they come together both are far more complex than when they last saw each other. Their understanding of the world has become grayer, but more realistic, and their appreciation for matters of sharing ones life with another serves to increase and deepen the gravity that initially drew them together four years prior.
Rating:
Summary: Absorbing, a nugget of history
Review: I loved this book. Inman's travel was compelling and fascinating. Ada's metamorphosis was equally fascinating. Written with such graceful description and powerful characters that you are sure these people existed. Fraziers understanding of day to day life during the civil war, to the detail of the language, is impeccable and moving. What a thrill to get a glimpse at life over 100 years ago!
Rating:
Summary: Memorable
Review: That down-home, backwoods, southern yesteryear jargon is alien to me so the resulting effort to sound authentic is impressive. Events described in understated monotone obviated the numbing effect on war weary characters.
|
