Cold Mountain : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Writes like an angel, plots like a hack
Review: Sadly, COLD MOUNTAIN didn't meet my expectations, which were raised high by the tremendous hype surrounding the book. Frazier is unquestionably a talented wordsmith, one of the best I've read in a long time. Still, the words hang like bright festive ornaments on what is ultimately a scrawny romance-novel tree beneath. It's a pretty book, but in the end is just fluff. I'll likely read Frazier's next, however. He'll only get better.

Rating:
Summary: A tasty read with a slightly bitter aftertaste
Review: I have only one real complaint about Charles Frazier's book, Cold Mountain. For me, the language of the book is the star. Frazier gives his characters and his narrator (what I assume to be) a lexicon authentic to mid-19th century, rural North Carolina. It was entertaining to read expressions that one would not hear today, and yet to find them not totally unfamiliar. The intertwined stories were interesting enough, with Inman's being a tale of determination in the face of danger and barely-averted disasters, and Ada's and Ruby's more a journal of self-reliance and self-discovery. The violence of Inman's journey is balanced by the slower paced struggle by the women against, ultimately, the same enemy. My complaint is only about the final pages of the book. The reader spends 350+ pages wondering if Inman and Ada will ever get together and, if so, will the evil of the times, personified in the cruel Home Guard, allow their reunion to be happy and long-lived. When the smoke from this inevitable confrontation clears, the outcome is uncertain and our questions unanswered. Thank goodness for the epilogue! Frazier takes us ten years into the future presumably to tie up the loose ends of his captivating tale. However, he is deliberately slightly vague about what has happened to Inman. The reader can piece together the obvious clues and decide whether all is well or not, but the fact that the Frazier is only slightly ambiguous (Inman's name is never used) is what is troublesome to me. It left an aftertaste of false "artsy-ness," as if to use this device would turn his novel into "literature." It was unnecessary and unsatisfying. All in all, though, the book is well worth the time invested by the reader. I look forward to Charles Frazier's next offering, as long as, in the meantime, he does not take up dressing in period garb and issue an album of himself playing fiddle ballads of the Civil War.

Rating:
Summary: Scenic Overlook
Review: The ravings for Frazier's book are less a measure of what's good about the novel than they are a symptom of how few writers today share either his exuberance for language or his patience for studied observation. These virtues alone, not to mention the author's keen sense of story, make Cold Mountain a worthwhile read and Charles Frazier a promising novelist. Quite excusably, given that this is a first book, the author sometimes overdoes himself. A well-tuned ear will turn up some flat notes in his bowings of 19th century Southern dialect, and his distracted and too-pious attention to the names of parts of tools and such occasionally ruptured this reader's suspended sense of disbelief. When I found myself unswayed by the language, I felt like I was reading a romance. The characters too often seem predictable (Inman the dauntless and redoubtable Eastwood-type) or improbable (Stobrod the neglectful-alcoholic-father-become-musical-holy man). The women are better drawn. But to cavil on this way says nothing about Frazier's real achievement, which is to have written a novel whose convincing main character is nothing but the land. He does for the Blue Ridge what Melville did for the sea. To miss this, as some reviewers have, is more than to have overlooked both the title of the novel and Frazier's own testimony in the afterword that the book's abiding spirit was and is the view from the mountain cabin where he wrote it. To miss this is to miss something truly spectacular in compemporary American letters. Read it and see.

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Summary: COLD MOUNTAIN IS A TESTIMONY TO NORTH CAROLINA DETERMINATION
Review: COLD MOUNTAIN IS FULL OF MY ANCESTORS AND YOUR ANCESTORS-THEIR HARDSHIPS, THEIR DETERMINATION, AND THEIR BOND TO THE LAND. FRAZIER WRITES LIKE A MOUNTAIN MAN. IT IS IN HIS SOUL-HE CAN WRITE NO OTHER WAY.

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Summary: I carried it everywhere reading at every opportunity!
Review: Chucky Frazier was raised in my hometown. What a wonderful book he has written. It reminds me of stories my father has told me of his grandfather, who fought in the Civil War. His descriptions are so vivid. You can feel what is going on with each of the characters in the book. Even something as simple as, Inman looking out a window, you feel like you are looking out the same window and seeing even the subtle changes of the day. I am so proud of Charles Frazier (Chucky)! I hope to get to telling him some day. Joe Thompson

Rating:
Summary: Excellent read, passionate, with a humane touch.
Review: A most interesting story of a man's journey home from a war which he has become disenchanted with. Illustrates the ravages and the brutal nature of a war fought in our country, breaking down mankinds needs to love and to be loved, to the lowest possible level. A love story broods underneath the mainstream of the story, with a touching ending.

Rating:
Summary: Walk don't run.
Review: When the speed of life is measured in bps and ones dream is to go from 28.8 to 56K, Cold Mountain brings you to a virtual halt, to a pace that matches Inman and Ada. Frazier with vocabulary of landscape and infrequent characters evokes the pace of a journey on foot, in a time when distractions were fewer, and a person had to sort out life and love, death and suffering, in the midst of horrific war and brutality, and in the day to day tasks of staying alive. In a world where too much comes to our senses, and most artificial, the journeys of Ada and Inman are a call to pay attention , which happens better when we slow down. How many times in reading Cold Mountain you will see words you don't know, and you have to stop and think, and picture, and wonder. And right there we begin to take on the very character of a journey like Inman and Ada, and are reminded that our own journey of discovery in life is not moving nearly so fast as we imagine.I wanted the book to to read faster, but its power is to reduce you to a walk, to thoughtfulness, to discernment on suffering, cruelty, the evil we are capable of, the compassion that surprises etc.

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Summary: Don't miss Cold Mountain !
Review: Cold Mountain is the best novel I have read in years. Inman's walk toward home, and Ada's struggle with the farm are so true.The use of the language by the author is so pungent, so accurate, so perfect, that for two days I was taken out of this century, and slogged along with Inman, remembering Fredericksburg, Petersburg and Ada. If you are interested in the history of the Civil War, and life, don't miss Cold Mountain

Rating:
Summary: Great writing, depressingly lousy book
Review: Cold Mountain reads like "Catch-22" as written by Quentin Tarantino. Charles Frazier has a marvelous vocabulary and a wonderful sense of detail, but he's following the wrong banner. Much has been made of his accuracy of detail. I don't know about that, but I do know that Rigel is not the brightest star in the constellation of Orion. Betelgeuse is the alpha star in that constellation. His veracity was further eroded, for me, when he made much of what an outsider Ada had become in Charleston, but later, on her and her father's last vist there, she was out partying with everyone and being avidly prusued by young men. Whoa! What happened to the romantic outcast? Anyway, I will read Charles Frazier again, but as someone once told Vincent van Gogh, he ought to lighten his palette.

Rating:
Summary: What a bunch of clap-trap!
Review: Amazingly overrated book. A neo-pagan revisionist view of the Civil War South. Redundant and boring. Burdened by hidden agenda. Herbal