Customer Reviews

The Cove: A Novel

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Cove, by Ron Rash, is very different from his previous book, Serena. While Serena was chock-filled with action and hell-and-damnation type characters, this book meanders more slowly. The title of the book refers to one of the lesser-used meanings of the word - a narrow gap or pass between hills or woods; a cave or cavern. The place where Laurel and her brother live is dark and eerie without much light, set in the deep forest of North Carolina where once the Carolina Parakeet found its home. "Nothing but shadow land, her mother had told Laurel, and claimed there wasn't a gloamier place in the whole Blue Ridge. A cursed place as well, most people in the county believed, cursed long before Laurel's father bought the land." "Worst of all was the cabin. No matter the time of day or season or how many lamps were lit, it remained a dank dim place that, as long as Laurel could remember, always smelled of suffering." Oftentimes, people in town go out to the cove and hang glass bottles or pieces of glass from a tree to warn others that this place is cursed. Laurel believes that she's made it through life because she has Hank alongside of her. Still, she is hoping for her real life to begin, something different to happen.

Laurel was a good student who her teacher thought would make a good teacher. Whenever Laurel gets a chance she reads the seventh grade books that her teacher let her take with her when she left school. However, Laurel had to drop out of school because of the way her classmates treated her. When a classmate of hers comes down with polio, the other students and their parents blame Laurel for that, thinking that she had cursed the girl.

The people of Mars Hill in Madison County think the cove brings bad luck. Moreover, they avoid Laurel because she has a birthmark on her shoulder which they think is a sign that she is a witch. When people in her community pass her on the street they cross to the other side. Sometimes they spit at her or throw eggs. Laurel has led a very lonely existence. When Laurel was in school, after her parents had died, "her classmates echoed what their parents believed - that her father's heart gave out after rocking Laurel with her birthmark touching his chest, that her mother's poisoned limb had turned the color of Laurels stained skin, that the cove itself had marked Laurel as its own." Hank has just returned from WWI without one hand and he is trying to get their farm in working order. He intends to marry a local girl and wants to prove to her family that a man with one hand can take care of a family.

One day when Laurel is walking in the woods, she comes across a man playing the flute beautifully. She stops to listen. Every day she checks to see if he is still there. At first she is suspicious of him, thinking that he is a robber or a tramp. One day, however, she sees that he is half-dead from bee or wasp stings all over his body. She takes him to her cabin that she shares with Hank and nurses him back to health. His name is Walter and he is mute and illiterate. Laurel takes an immediate attraction to him and sees him as a way out of her loneliness. What she doesn't know is that he carries a dark secret that comes to the surface gradually. Walter thinks about a trip he took on a boat to get to the cove. "A music he'd never heard before rose from the stream. The notes had colors as well as sounds, bright threads woven into the water's flow. Some of that bright water splashed up on the bank. It was green and shimmering and he scooped it up into his palm and it became a feather." Where did Walter come from and what is he doing at the cove?

There are few main characters in the book; Laurel and Hank and Hank's friend Slidell who helps Hank with the farm work once a week. In town, there is a military recruiter named Chauncey Feith, who is an arrogant, vain and dangerous man. He has the idea that anyone who speaks German is a 'Hun' and he goes after the professor of languages at the local college. He also has it in for the librarian because she has German books in the library. He is the book's 'bad guy'. The characters are pretty transparently good or bad.

Rash tries to use the language of the people which at times is awkward and inconsistent. For example, Laurel says of Walter, "Not being able to talk, that's got to be burdensome too. I'd think it could make you feel a lavish of aloneness." "I want to teach him to read and write, Laurel said. That might confidence him more." While this type of language seems to go with the setting, Mr. Rash does not use it consistently throughout the book which I wondered about. I think the book would have been stronger with more consistency.

The descriptions of the land are wonderful and breath-takingly beautiful. Mr. Rash has a way with words that brings you to the land and environment as if you were actually there. I enjoyed this book and read it quickly. It actually could be a long novella. The book is laid out with about 45 blank pages out of this 255 page book. It appears that these pages are filler. I have purchased Mr. Rash's other books and look forward to reading them. He has a gift that speaks to me, one that is rare and unique.

Ron Rash is an author of supernatural perception whose writing can take on the haunting forcefulness of classic gothic storytelling. His power of observation is allied with his talent for translating human emotion into exquisite language. These brilliant stylistic gifts are deployed to full advantage in his latest pointed, tense yet heartfelt novel, The Cove: A Novel.

In THE COVE Rash plunges the reader deeply into a chilling world in which reality is narrow, bitter, and tragic. The setting is rural Appalachia at the height of World War I and though the war is raging far off in distant Europe, the barbarism of that war is close and fierce, right down home in the small mountain town of Mars Hill, North Carolina.

The rich variety of characters who populate Rash's Appalachia and their persuasive authenticity contribute scrupulously to the elemental power of his prose.

The story is centered on Laurel Shelton, a young pretty girl living in a rugged mountain cove which has spooked most of the simple townspeople of Mars Hill. Laurel is ostracized by these backward, ignorant folk, not merely because she lives on a struggling farm in the isolated cove they fear is cursed, but because she has a large purple birthmark on her shoulder which in the eyes of the superstitious is the mark of the devil. With the exception of Hank, her veteran of the war brother, Laurel lives a lonely, almost solitary existence forever shadowed by the foreboding gloom and haunting isolation of the cove. Simple happiness and freedom from loneliness seem destined to elude Laurel until the mysterious appearance of a mute stranger in the cove brings the promise of love for the first time into her lonely, desolate life.

Rash's plotting in THE COVE is subtle, especially in the inevitability of the story's events. But the tension he creates and firmly maintains control of is not. He allows the reader to assume predictability in the plot, only to tighten the tether of suspense in least expected ways, until the full fury of tragedy is unleashed in the novel's dramatic denouement.

THE COVE is first and foremost a love story but one which is blighted by a palpable sense of doom and wrenching heartache. Readers who are fans of the previous works of Ron Rash, particularly of Serena: A Novel (P.S.), should not approach THE COVE expecting another hard-edged SERENA, for THE COVE is a different kind of drama, one with a delicate reach and poignant expression of the human heart.

The Cove: A Novel is Ron Rash at his most affecting best and has convinced this reader of his versatile and enduring talent. It is most highly worthy of five stars.

To the fans of Ron Rash: Go ahead and blast away, but this is not a Ron Rash novel at its best. I will ask you to read the book before taking it out on the messenger. I reviewed and rated Serena very high in all categories, but The Cove is a dud. Rash can write. I know that from Serena, not from The Cove. The prose is only adequate, the plot has tremendous potential never realized, the characters are real, but never got into my head or under my skin. Even the antagonist, Sergeant Chauncey Feith, recruiter for the Army - one could argue that there are two antagonists: Chauncey and the Cove, itself - did not move me in the least. I had some empathy for Laurel Shelton, the lonely and lovely protagonist, but not enough to really "feel" her pain.

The execution of the plot fails on multiple levels. In of itself, the potential was there for very interesting and engaging book. But the manner of interaction or lack thereof between the two sides of the story doomed it. I do not like to spoil anything for anyone that still wants to read the book, so I cannot get into more detail on this. But generally, I like to feel that the protagonist and the antagonist are at each other or at least on a collision course.

The character of Walter had so much more to offer, but again, he was stunted in his growth and reach.

Recently I read Nightwoods: A Novel by Charles Frazier - another book that takes place in a similar Appalachian environment. And this book suffers from some of the same problems. The atmosphere that this location could provide is not exploited by the writer. Frazier was much better in his novel than Rash is in this one. The frustrating thing is that we know, from Serena, that Rash can put you into the middle of the story and make you feel everything that the characters are feeling. This time his writing is lazy and so is the effort.

The approach to the climax is also disappointing, but I'll say no more about it.

I cannot recommend this book, especially if you read and enjoyed Serena. This is a straight two star rating

Ron Rash has a sublime sense of place, atmospheric detail and colloquial manners. The Appalachian landscapes in his novels bloom like Mother Nature on the summit of evolution. Colors, smells, and sounds take on a sentient quality that you encounter on every page. There's a brutal delicacy to his terrains that feels humid, primordial, ancient, and timeless. Moment to moment, you move from the thrust of creation to the threat of destruction. His stories convey themselves through the power of domain. His latest is a testament to the most fertile aspects of his craft, which shimmer through an otherwise flawed and listless story.

A short, mysterious prologue introduces us to a forbidding, rural North Carolina cove in 1957, and is followed by the main story, which takes place toward the end of WW I on the same rugged and haunted turf. Laurel Shelton, an ostracized young woman, believed to be a hexed witch that causes harm and doom to others, lives with her brother, Hank, a disabled soldier recently returned from battle. Hank is engaged to marry a woman whose father needs to be convinced that Hank isn't also possessed. Into their solitary existence comes a mute flautist, Walter, who changes the course of their lives.

The alchemic beauty of the story is largely communed through Rash's formidable powers of description. The cove area, where Laurel and Hank Shelton live, has a supernatural aura. It is evident that the cove's mystical power will impel events along a trenchant course of turmoil and danger. The tension mounts early, with subtle and bold implications of the cove's spectral qualities and the Shelton's cursed history, which are woven inextricably together.

However, there are structural and character-related problems that make this story fall short of the author's intentions. It is difficult to relate them all without giving spoilers, so I will confine them to a few examples. First, the characters are static stereotypes that don't developed beyond what you see on introduction. They are either good and heroic or bad and polluted, and you know on contact. A few, like Walter, have hidden natures that are revealed gradually, but they don't truly evolve.

Secondary characters--Hank's friends, for instance, are stock set pieces. Slidell (Hank's closest friend) and his moonshine distilling behaviors are derivative and prosaic. If you want to be captivated by moonshine madness, read Finn, which places you vividly into the depths of this culture. I got tired of scenes of sittin' on the porch drinking moonshine, or laying about drinking moonshine, or recovering from the effects of moonshine. It added nothing to the significance of story, and seemed more like filler. Moreover, Slidell had minimal dimension beyond the buddy sidekick.

The villain, recruitment officer Chancey Feith, was a thin membrane of a figure. His presence was a platform for Rash to telegraph the theme of ignorant discrimination and flag-waving patriotism. He was a formula jingoist character that we knew to despise, who had no depth beyond pettiness and nationalism (with an obvious wink to today's imperialism). He was a flat, predictable entity designed to manipulate the story in a deterministic direction.

The plot is simple, and for all the meandering that Rash precipitated, it could have been reduced to a short story format. The structure was wobbly; for instance, he built up an imaginary dream world for Laurel to imbibe, where she insisted on knowing and recreating a historical place (that was central to the plot), leading the reader on a launched journey that demanded some kind of realization or corollary. However, Rash just dumped it with a reductive denouement.

As a matter of fact, several mobilized events and ideas were bluntly dispatched in this manner. He rushed the important events, especially as the climax drew nearer. Directions drifted and dropped and the story was sidetracked with spurious shifts, as Rash let the grains of some incipient ideas vanish with an inchoate shrug. It appeared as if he was trying to write two stories, and then eliminated one without properly trimming and removing surplus. Some of the context just shuffled into discarded notions. The myth of the cove was ultimately a tepid trickle, as its meaning wasn't revelatory or fulfilling.

At the end of the day, this is a mixed bag. The book is worth reading simply for the sense of place and time, providing an intimate feeling of color and history through geography and atmosphere. Rash is an author with a subtle and transcendent gift for transporting the reader to the Appalachian wilderness. However, once you get there, you're stuck in a stagnant, lackluster zone.

Laurel has lived her whole life in a gloomy cove with her brother Hank. Shunned by the locals for many reasons (they believe the cove is cursed, they believe Laurel a witch, Laurel has a large birthmark, etc..), and kicked out of school early, Laurel's entire life now centers around farm chores and taking care of Hank. Hank is recently back from World War I (still raging) after losing a hand, and he is working to restore the farm in hopes of marrying a local girl. The loneliness each feels particularly Laurel is oppressive. And then Laurel comes across Walter a musician who cannot speak and needs her help. And of course, everything changes.

Rash delivers simply a brutal read capturing a town gripped by superstition and war hysteria. The pacing is perfect and the entire cast of characters feel real and alive. The ominous cove literally seeps off the pages. Even more surprising, Walter's story is based on historic events. In The Cove, Rash creates a timeless and relevant story which is sure to make December's best of lists.

Set in Mars Hill, North Carolina, near the end of the first World War, Ron Rash's THE COVE tells the story of Laurel Shelton, a woman trapped by the misfortune of her parents, the need of her brother to move on with his life, and the superstitions and prejudices of the surrounding community. While Hank, her brother, has survived losing his hand in the war and has gotten engaged, with plans to move from the family farm, Laurel's hope for happiness improves only after she encounters a man who does not speak, ragged and injured in the woods nearby. Although readers know that he has escaped from a German internment camp, the tensions among Laurel's loneliness, the war fever of the nearby community, and the hopes of the main characters define heroism beyond the confines of the immediate setting.

Those familiar with Rash's prose and poetry will find his consistent stylistic mastery here in his depiction of the eastern North Carolina region at the turn of the last century, not only in his attention to detail but in his preservation of the voices. Rash often converts nouns into verbs ("black shallowed to gray in the cabin window") and occasionally revives the old terms associated with this part of Appalachia. At one point, for example, Laurel refers to "a lavish of lonesomeness," oddly combining a notion of plenty with isolation. An accomplished poet, Rash takes care in his precise, restrained descriptions, as seen in this passage: ". . . it wasn't just love. She'd felt love before, known its depths when her mother died. This is something rarer. Happiness, Laurel thought, that must be what this is." The scene closes with Laurel's joining her brother, Hank, and the man she has rescued, Walter, as they sit in silence, attempting to preserve the comforting moment as long as they can. Along with scenes of such gentle subtlety, Rash presents scenes of disturbing power. His description of digging a well evokes such a strong sense of threat and claustrophobia that I shared the men's relief that the task was done.

My main reservation about the novel is the depiction of its antagonist, Chauncey Feith. The privileged son of the community's savings and loan association owner, his appointment as a non-commissioned recruitment officer keeps him at home in Mars Hill, making him painfully aware of how his service differs from that of the men sent overseas. Feith's fantasies of heroism and glory, his concerns about living up to his father's ideal of manhood, his ignorance, and his reliance on bullying to "prove" his courage limit his development as a character. Unfortunately, he becomes a straw man as a result, a two-dimensional representation of jingoism, anti-intellectualism, xenophobia, and intolerance. Not all of Rash's secondary characters lack such development. Slidell, a friend to the Shelton family, has a past that shapes his interaction with them and influences the key decisions he makes at novel's end. In a work that features fully realized characters--particularly Laurel's yearning hope for a life beyond her confinement, but certainly Walter's shifting sense of place and Hank's growing compassion for his sister, it would have been good for Chauncey to have served as more than a stock character, especially since he plays a pivotal role in the denouement of the novel. To Rash's credit, the closing chapters of THE COVE do not follow the conventions one would expect, certainly not those that appear to be telegraphed at the novel's beginning, but making the antagonist absolutely unsympathetic reduces Feith's usefulness as a foil to the main characters.

In reading THE COVE, as other reviewers have noted, one sees a contrast in scope with Rash's previous novel, SERENA. In SERENA, Rash invests the title character with a mythic quality--Serena quotes Medea, numerous critics have compared her to Lady MacBeth, and Rash himself has compared her to Tamburlaine. He presents Serena with a feral, retributive near divinity as she embodies the grasping consequences of the Golden Age economy in its abandoning stewardship for plunder during the Great Depression. In contrast, Laurel struggles to find personal contentment. Laurel understands that the best she can hope for is happiness--love appears almost beyond her grasp. Laurel lacks the resources, will, and inhumane self-centeredness that make Serena a monster. To present Serena as a convincing character, Rash has developed a novel of epic scope with resonance of ancient tragedy (a work crew as a Greek chorus) and Renaissance drama. THE COVE offers a more intimate story. Laurel does not aspire to shape continents, only to find a loving home. It is fitting that in this novel Rash's prose takes on the restrained quality of his recent short story collection, BURNING BRIGHT; in THE COVE, his writing is spare, not slight.

In sum, while THE COVE does not attempt to match the grand scale of SERENA, it nevertheless succeeds in presenting the small-scale personal intensity that we find in much of his fiction, like his recent short stories such as "Lincolnites" (BURNING BRIGHT). Those familiar with Rash's work will enjoy seeing the further development of his talent, and those who know his work solely from SERENA will see another facet of his fine storytelling.

Ron Rash's latest book set in Marshall County, NC is a slim but very well told tale taking place during WW1. Laurel Shelton and her injured War Veteran brother live in an isolated Hollow near Mars Hill College. Laurel is shunned because she is "marked" by a birthmark. Her father bought land which had been over farmed and badly needed some trees trimmed to let sunshine on the house and crops.The place has a bad reputation but is never explained exactly why, it seems to be merely a victim of poor farming. The prologue to the book has a TVA worker talking about "flooding" the area which was no where near where the TVA flooding was actually done. I was born in the county very near Marshall and have family still living in Mars Hill and never heard of any flooding except by Mother Nature.The book is very poetical with two unfortunate people having no support system. Laurel hears a man playing the flute near her washing place in a creek. He has a note explaining he is mute but later he is discovered to be a German from a boat that got caught up in the madness of WW1. He is a talented flute player and has escaped from imprisonment and was trying to get to New York to play music professionally. He helps Hank and Laurel on the farm and falls for Laurel. Of course it all ends badly. A well told story, very lyrical in the telling with Ron Rash's usual fine prose.

Ron Rash reminds me of Ivan Doig. Although not household names, both are excellent storytellers with large followings who write evocatively about their areas. Set in rural mountainous North Carolina during the First World War, The Cove presents several tantalizing mysteries, solutions to which are doled out with care and skill. Each character, even if not central, is three dimensional and believable, the era is sensually presented, the settings and everyday details are lovingly created transporting the reader back almost 100 years into a time a place realistically and lovingly. Highly recommended.

The Cove has a lot going for it: Ron Rash's impeccable prose style, which captures the mysterious woods in their earthly, verdant magic, rendering them and the cove on such a magnitude as to be a character in the novel, which I believe was Rash's intention. We have a sympathetic protagonist, Laurel Shelton, a lonely beautiful misfit in the uncertain, paranoid times of World War I hungry for connection in a harsh world. She is a "woman waiting for her life to begin." We have Laurel meeting a mysterious stranger in the forest, who plays the flute in ways that resonate to the very core of Laurel's being and as the relationship blossoms we see the unfolding of the stranger's mysterious origins and character.

We also have a foe, the ignoramus narcissist and opportunist Chauncey Feith, an army recruiter who uses his father's high connections to gain a lofty position. Feith is full of rhetoric about heroism but he is a coward whose privilege insulates him from engaging in battle, yet he longs to be seen as a hero and will do anything to achieve this status.

Rash creates a plot between these three characters that is compelling enough. However, The Cove misses its mark for me. And I say this having read and enjoyed Rash's previous novel, Serena, and my judgment of The Cove is partly based on an inevitable comparison between the two novels. Whereas Serena has a believably dark, complex character who drives the novel's plot into gothic depths, Laurel doesn't come alive the way Serena does. Laurel seems more like a character in service of Rash's plot as do the other characters in the novel. As a result, the narrative in The Cove feels wooden, static.

Another problem is the flute-playing stranger and Laurel develop a relationship that seems at times cliché and a bit maudlin. Finally, the character of Chauncey Feith, who has many parallels to today's political leaders who would use "the war on terror" to propel their own careers, is too simplistic and mediocre to be interesting.

As a result, The Cove is a slow-plotted melodrama full of promising ideas that lacks the bite and power of Rash's previous novel Serena, which if you're new to Rash's writing, is a much better place to start.

Final Thoughts

Had I not read Serena, I may have given The Cove 4 or 4.5 stars but that is the challenge of an excellent novelist like Rash: He has readers with high expectations.

The Cove, the latest novel by Ron Rash is one of those novels the reaches in side the reader and opens a trunk of emotions. That should surprise no one who has read any of Rash's novels. I have long felt that Rash is a rarity; a complete novelist, equally able to develop an intelligent storyline, excelling at character development, and adept describing a scene or emotion. His talent at writing dialog, especially the dialog Southern Appalachia is first rate. It is with no doubt that Rash's comfort with the English language, a result of his first love and art, poetry, is evident on every page.

Set in Mars Hill, North Carolina during the closing months of World War I, The Cove is a story about a brother and sister, Hank and Laurel Shelton who share a farm that if not blighted, at least seems cursed to their neighbors. The Cove is a dark area of the mountains where some sections never see the sun. Yet, despite the lay of the land Hank and Laurel manage to make a life. Hank, a recently returned vet is missing a hand and is engaged to be married. Laurel, an unfortunate who suffers from wine colored birthmarks that set her apart from other residents of the community. Many in the town shun Laurel and consider her unfit to associate with. There are other characters, but none less graciously painted than an Army recruiter that goes after an aging professor at the local college who happens to teach German.

Perhaps because of her situation, Laurel has a special attachment to the country around her, roaming the forest where she is more at home than in town. While out one day she hears an odd sound and follows it to the source. It is this discovery that changes both her and Hank's lives and sets in motion a story that builds to an unexpected and climatic conclusion.

Ron Rash continues his legacy of superbly written novels. One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, The World Made Straight, and Serena provide a wonderful prelude to The Cove.

I highly recommend.

Peace.