Rating: Summary: Charles Frazier is a gifted writer! Review: Cold Mountain is the best book I have read in years. This is not a civil war book. It as human a story as Crime and Punishment and Grapes of Wrath. Inman's struggles against both the elements and civilization are profound. Ada's awakening to the pulse of nature never captured in her sketches is heartwarming. I love how Frazier makes it clear that war is no place for a man of conscious. I recommend this book strongly!
Rating: Summary: From a great start it's all down hill. Review: If you like Ken Burns version of American history, or wish to know the value of a plot outline this book is for you.
Rating: Summary: A wonderful surprise Review: I had decided early on not to read this book based on a review I read or the early hype--I don't remember. But someone gave me a copy, and I resolved to at least give it a try. I was hooked after the first chapter. Frazier writes beautifully, about people and the world they inhabit. His observations were of as much interest to me as the story--or the stories--and the story is compelling.
Rating: Summary: Hauntingly beautiful prose. Review: A friend loaned me Cold Mountain last month, and when I started the book, I initially thought the narrative a bit slow and heavy-handed. But once into it, Frazier's hauntingly beautiful prose held me spellbound, and I fought for time during the day when I could return to it. Like a difficult text, I sometimes found that I had to read and then reread passages, but with Frazier it wasn't so much to improve comprehension as it was to savor how wonderfully well he told his tale. Although forewarned the ending would disappoint me, it did not. I think it ended only as it could have; but for me, the story was secondary to the beauty of the language with which it was told.
Rating: Summary: YAWN Review: This was honestly the most boring book I have ever read in my life. Like wading through Jell-O, slow, heavy, never-ending. I can't believe it's so popular.
Rating: Summary: Sip it slowly Review: Cold Mountain is not a page turner. In fact, it made me want to linger on the page to soak in each new scene as it unfolded. Frazier does a masterful job of using Inman's journey to introduce us to very uncommon people in common packages. Every turn in the trail unfolds another fascinating character molded by his or her own unique life story. I have to admit, I actually found myself angered by the ending. I slammed the book shut. Call me a sentimentalist, but it was not the ending I was hoping and looking for. If you're looking for action and plot twists, go read Clancy. If you see a book as a journey and not a goal, I would highly recommend Cold Mountain.
Rating: Summary: A majestic, magical and moving transport to another time. Review: After many recommendations by friends, and the understandable fame of the novel, I read Cold Mountain in a kind of literary hush. I have not been so moved by the beauty of language in many years - since I first read Faulkner. There was a kind of personal, historic, and environmental reverence to Mr. Frazier's writing that in no way proved to be dissonant or fragmented. On all counts Cold Mountain is an integrated, organic novel of love in all of its raminfications. I was in New Orleans during my reading of the last chapters of the book and was so moved by the "procession" toward the end that I eschewed my usual hedonism to stay in bed and read the book to its conclusion, at which point I dissolved into tears and called my lover.
Rating: Summary: 10 STARS! Review: Simply the best book I have ever read. A wannabe writer of sorts myself, I now feel totally inadequate to the task. Mr. Frazier's novel will move your heart and soul like never before. Cold Mountain is better than anything Faulkner did in his prime and time will prove it a true classic to be read by future generations.
Rating: Summary: Definitely in my "Top Ten of All Time" that I have read.. Review: An excellent book, couldn't put it down once I started. Congratulations to Mr. Frazier.
Rating: Summary: Life's superabundant riches and human tragedy Review: This book astonished and moved me deeply. Despite the leisurely pace of the prose, I could not put it down. The characters of Inman, Ada, and Ruby were compelling and idiosyncratic, each captured in endearingly human moments -- like Inman's flinging his hat out the window, or Ada's jumping on one leg to take off her trousers, or Ruby asking if she should cough. Mentioning a few details can't begin to explain this book's superabundant riches. I interpreted the ending tragically (though I've heard some people argue that the hero doesn't die). I felt so upset, I sobbed for a good 20 minutes, and then I felt furious at the author for cheating his characters of all but a taste of the happiness they deserved. I thought of writing to Mr. Frazier to complain, but then concluded that the tragic irony of the hero's death needed to be so keenly and bitterly felt, because it made the otherwise vastly incomprehensible tragedy of the Civil War personally painful and meaningful. The Civil War still rankles like an old unhealed wound in the psyche of the USA, so a Civil War story can't end "happily ever after." Perhaps readers' feeling pain through "Cold Mountain" heals something.
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