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Summary: Modern day classic
Review: This book is a modern day classic that should be required in English AP classes. Mr. Fraiser has created a great novel with a structure similar to Canteberry Tales or The Odyssey. The way his prose seems to flow in fascinating sentences and the emotions he evokes prompts me to highly recommend it.
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Summary: At last! A story about the courage to keep moving forward...
Review: Cold Mountain makes no promises to be anything other than what it is, a story about people in late nineteenth century America who recognize that deep love does not always happen more than once in a lifetime. Often, life can get in the way and love sometimes has to pay a very great price in order to have the chance to exist at all. To any reader looking for a "romance", I say that this is an amazing romance, a truly wondrous love story about a man and a woman and how they discover not only who they are capable of becoming, but what they can share together as a result of each one having tested the limits of their personal strength and no longer fearing to live life on its terms. Many readers will decry the unhappy ending. But why should every story have a happy ending in order to be a "good" story? This book will move you to think about life as it truly can be, one unique twist after another. The tale moves slowly because of the very settings of time and place in which it occurs. Charles Frazier understands how to write about joy and humor and sorrow according to his characters perceptions of them...not according to a twentieth century viewpoint. Take this book between both hands, find a soft, quiet spot to sit and don't let go.
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Summary: Fish struggles upstream to spawn and die
Review: Mr. Frazier is an author of considerable potential, whose work has gone terribly wrong. His writing has a quiet dignity, and its portrayal of an alien time and place is most absorbing. Unfortunately, the imposed theme gives the impression of having been heavily influenced by some editor hoping to add to the Love Story / Bridges of Madison County canon. Beneath that rough exterior, Inman is an intelligent, sensitive guy; beneath that lovely exterior, Ada is an intelligent, sensitive gal-- what more natural than that they form a bond of deepest affection, one whose basis the reader had best not question. As it turns out, the plot proves almost a nature special: see the mighty salmon (Salman, perhaps?) struggle upstream to spawn and then die. As for 'that ending!,' had that encounter taken place anywhere earlier in the narrative, Inman would have simply dispatched the kid. Here, however, we've got some major tear-jerking to accomplish. That kid, by the way, is the most vivid character in the book.
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Summary: Overpraised and Overbaked
Review: When a book has been preceded by such an armful of critical and popular kudos, it is not unreasonable to expect something special. What comes as no surprise after the fact is that the majority of this was hype; either that, or the state of the novel in America is in a sorrier state than I thought. Dull, predictable, with a metronomic structure of "his chapter/her chapter", I couldn't wait for it to end. I admired the skill in getting the language right and all the research it must have required (hence my extra star) but as a work of imagination, power or even entertainment it is severely lacking. Interesting for a first novel but little more. Be warned...
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Summary: cold mountain not a book for everyone!!!
Review: Cold Mountain was not a novel for everyone!!! It was too drawn out, had too much detail about things that were not important. The charaters were not developed, and the book took forever to get to one point. In my opinion, romantic and war novels do not mix. I only read it because ny teacher made me.But on a good note, Frazier had alot of good ideas. He just has to find a better way to express them.
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Summary: Not My Favorite Type of Book
Review: Cold Mountain was a hard and boring book to read . It always made me sleepy when I read it. The pages went by real slow . It seemed like I read twenty pages , even though I only read five . I couldn't really feel the love between Inman and Ada . This book would be good for people who like to read about the good old days , by people who have a lot of spare time . I did not like the topic of this book . I would give this book two stars out of five.
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Summary: This is but a wretched, slovenly novel, and yet bad-written
Review: Charles Frazier is not the new incarnation of Melville, Homer, Faulkner, Pynchon, - or even Laura Ingalls Wilder. He seems to be a dead ringer for James Fenimore Cooper, our nation's first author of implausible, overwrought, romantic claptrap. In fact, you can find an apt and searing critique of "Cold Mountain" in an essay written by Mark Twain a hundred years ago called "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses". In it, Twain humorously claims that there "are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction." Twain kindly provides us with the nineteen rules, and they are very sound rules. He then proceeds to point out how Cooper broke eighteen of them in "Deerslayer": Frazier may have managed to break all nineteen in "Cold Mountain". Rule 13, for example, requires that an author "use the right word, not its second cousin." Frazier likes to toss off such gems as "a sight of squirrels" and "It would go a way toward ordering her mind congruent with where she was". Rule 14 simply states "Eschew surplusage." Had Frazier applied this rule, he might have eschewed writing a sentence like: "A scene of such quiet and peace that the observer on the ridge could avouch to it later in such a way as might lead those of glad temperaments to imagine some conceivable history where long decades of happy union stretched before the two on the ground." avOuch!Besides the various crimes against literature in the book, the "nature" is bogus, the situations are hackneyed, the historical settings are dubitable, the farming and husbandry are silly, the astronomy is wrong, and the geography is incomprehensible. I found myself running to my local library to get an antidote- William Faulkner's "The Unvanquished". There is more of the South and the Civil War in the first chapter of that book than in 449 pages of Frazier. I highly recommend "The Unvanquished", and, of course, "Selected Short Writings of Mark Twain", in which you will find the complete enumeration of Charles Frazier's literary offenses.
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Summary: horrible; this year's "midnight in the garden of good ...."
Review: The publishing industry dupes us yet again. One of those books that you have to get because of all the attention, and then when finished you continue to recommend it because you're too embarrassed to admit you were duped! This was the literature equivalent of the film "The Piano". If you liked that picture you'll love this book. Just do the rest of us a favor and keep your opinions to yourself.
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Summary: The Civil War actually becomes exciting!
Review: Charles Frazier is a master of making history come alive. Cold Mountain brings the reality and tragedy of America's bloodiest war home. If you remotely enjoy history or you're an avid romance fan, this book's for you!!
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Summary: Romantic and moving -- a great read!
Review: Due to a lot of business travel and long airplane trips, I've read a lot of 5-star books of late (Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Under the Tuscan Sun, Crooked Little Heart, to name a few). But, I was very touched by Inman's spiritual and literal search for home, peace and for love. After making the long journey with him and also feeling very involved in Ada's progress, I could only be saddened by the ending. This is a "must read" if you have romance in your soul.
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