Customer Reviews

Cold Mountain (Vintage Contemporaries)

5 star:		(679)
4 star:		(325)
3 star:		(185)
2 star:		(188)
1 star:		(177)

 

 

The story is simple. A wounded confederate soldier decides he has had enough of war and slowly makes his way home, hoping the woman he loves, Ada, is waiting for him. The book chronicles this journey and reminds me a little of The Odyssey as well as Don Quixote.

Based on the author's first hand knowledge of the smoky mountains and his family legends, the book transports the reader to a Civil War scenario that has little resemblance to Gone With the Wind. Details of death and destruction are described in gruesome clarity and the long road home is rife with them. Inman, the lead character encounters cruelty and kindness, starvation and capture, rogues and victims. The author uses words well, and some of the images will haunt my mind for a long time.

The heroine, Ada, has been gently raised in Charleston and is not prepared for running a farm when her father dies and the hired help run off. She almost starves until another young woman of about her age, Ruby, moves in with her and teaches her how to survive. Ada's growth into competency and self-sufficiency is rendered with the same detailed descriptions as Inman's journey and I was left with a new appreciation of what farm life is all about.

The book is good and I understand why publishers were thrilled with it. It has a big theme, is well written, and gives its readers a fresh new way to look at the Civil War. Many of the scenes made me flinch, but it also deepened my understanding of this very important period in history and what it is to be an American.

I bought Cold Mountain a couple of months ago and, thinking I wouldn't be able to put it down once I started it, have been saving it for a time when I'd be able to read without interruption. A four-day February beach trip provided the perfect opportunity.

This is a wonderful book! From the very first line - "At the first gesture of morning, flies began stirring.", I was hooked, and stayed with Inman, Ada, Monroe, the Swangers, Sara, Ruby, Stobrod, the Preacher, and the Goat Woman, right to the end. No, it's not a "pretty" story - war and what it does to people isn't pretty. Sure, I'd have preferred an ending that brought tears of joy, rather than tears of pain; but there really wasn't any other way for the book to end.

I'm neither an historian, nor a Civil War buff, but I loved this book! The word imagery made me "see" the trail that Inman followed, and "feel" what he and Ada felt. Surprisingly, this former English teacher loved the way Frazier punctuated the dialogue - understated, but effective, and just the way a storyteller would write.

So why do I give it a "9", instead of a "10"? I was a little confused by some lack of detail, like Monroe's church affiliation - just what was an "assembly" in 1864? A map covering the land Inman walked would have been helpful for the geography enthusiasts (I had to get out a map of North Carolina to find Salisbury); and a glossary for Frazier's mountain terms would have been a real bonus for those of us not from North Carolina.

Did these minor complaints keep me from enjoying the book? Heck no, and I can't wait for Frazier's next novel - I may even reread Cold Mountain, or one of his travel books - and I'll surely read his next book before reading any of its reviews. I am so glad I read these reviews AFTER I read the book!

Charles Frazier's debut `Cold Mountain' received a deserved National Book Award in 1997. One of the best American novels of the 90s, this book is not for everyone. Part an unconventional love story, part a War story, but above all, the study of the human condition, the novel requires patience from the reader.

To experienced readers, who like literary works, it is not difficult to fall in love with this narrative. The story is slow, the writer builds his characters and situations bit by bit --that's why people who are looking for a war adventure or a conventional love story should stay away from `Cold Mountain'.

The focus on three main characters: Inman, a soldier who deserts the battle and embarks in a journey to meet Ada, his beloved who's trying to keep going the farm left by her father, and Ruby, a mountain-girl who helps her with the farm. Throught his journey, Inman meets a different cast of characters --some people help and some not-- that more than anything exemplify the human condition, mostly in war times. Meanwhile, Ada, who can't keep in touch with him, tries to survive in the farm her father left. She will count on the help from Ruby, a simple girl who knows a lot about nature and farming and wants to help Ada, as long as she is treated like an equal, and not a maid.

After the story is set, and the characters introduced, Frazier is free to left the three main characters dominating the narrative. Although they are not the narrators, we're allowed to see their most inner thoughts, fears and joys. Every character is believable, in my opinion. Everyone has his/her life changed because of the war, and all of them are wounded souls.

The narrative is very descriptive therefore many parts are static. And although the story seems not to be going anywhere, it actually it --but it is very subtle. For some readers, this kind of device is a problem --while for others this is truly beautiful. Not many writers have the ability that Frazier does to do such device. What in many narratives could be a bore, in his is simply wonderful to take a time off and look around, to see how much the environment has changed with the war.

Inman, Ada and Ruby are unforgettable. While he has one different supporting character every chapter; the two girls become close friends, in a beautiful friendship of mutual need. While Ruby can teach the mysteries of the nature; Ada helps her friends to learn things like arts.

All in all, Frazier has written one of the best novels published in the 90s. This is the kind of book that requires a lot from the reader, but it gives back much more. It is very rewarding to follow Inman, Ada and Ruby in their journey, however long and difficult it is.

An incredibly well researched odyssey of a late civil war wounded confederate soldier leaving the hospital and the war behind and walking across the Appalachians to home in Cold Mountain at the far western tip of North Carolina.

The language and terminology immerse the reader as if doing time travel... The descriptions of the world are beyond poetry even...

The story is really about a young couple, the girl at home and her travails, and the ravaged veteran of too many bloodfights struggling to avoid capture and to survive in a collapsing Confederacy. We learn a lot about what went into Ada the female protagonist and how she develops and about her nature-girl friend, Ruby, and who she is, but the male protagonist, Inman, just is what he is without heroics nor pretention but with gradually emerging depth of character as he encounters real characters more frightening than those with which Ulysses was faced.

Inman, IMHO, is the ultimate Taoist... knowing much, saying little, doing what needs to be done and not apologising...

This book won the National Book Award and was deservedly on the NY Times best seller list for 45 weeks running when it was first published.

I personally rate it as the best book I have read in at least ten years and I read two or three books a week.

I'm really ambivalent about this book, so feel free to throw things, since I know I'm in the minority in my complaints. But for those of you still thinking of reading this, here's my semi-worthless 2 cents. ;-)

First off, the good: Frazier's prose style takes some getting used to, but it's often lovely and immersive nevertheless, as thick as the tangled forests of Cold Mountain. The book definitely deserves praise for Frazier's gorgeous writing -- at best, he is definitely a major talent. The finest passages of the book (which fell most often for me in the first half) breathe life into a solitary journey 140 years ago -- it can feel utterly real to the reader, and did give me a new window into this period of history.

But at worst (and increasingly so as the story goes on), Frazier is also pretentious and showy, often at the very obvious expense of his characters and story. Too often as the story moves forward, It's All. About. The Writing. As evidenced (for instance) by his decision to use dashes, not quotes for the dialogue. This awkward style choice threw me out of the action every time he used it, and also means that all comments have to be overcarefully attributed, etc. The dialogue for so many of these characters should crackle with life but because of the lifeless stylistic choices Frazier makes when employing dialogue, the characters, like their words, stay flat and sparkless.

Frazier also makes some peculiar choices in pacing and action -- he spends more time in describing a piece of underbrush than a death, a device he employs time and again. Stomach-churning moments of violence occur constantly and almost matter-of-factly, and are described (and viewed by the characters) with a detachment that to me, at least, ultimately became off-putting. I began the book with excitement but by the middle was dreading the turn of every page. The three main human characters never came into focus for me -- while their secrets are tantalizing, the fact that they keep us at a distance is ultimately frustrating. This is offset, ironically, by some very richly detailed animal characterizations but again, be warned -- even these interludes are almost all about sadness and death, every encounter unbelievably depressing. Far more interesting than the leads for me were the incidental characters -- Sara, the young pioneer mother, or the old goat woman, or Stobrod the fiddler.

And it's all just grim, grim, grim. While I'm sure times and struggles during this period were indeed, awful, depressing, horrible, etc., the unrelenting desolation ultimately left me feeling very little for anyone.

And it doesn't help that Frazier caps off all of this sound and fury with a melodramatic Hollywood-style ending he telegraphs painfully over and over again throughout the last 60 pages or so (when I finally got there, I was furious at such a prosaic and melodramatic -- not to mention unrealistic -- outcome). In addition, while the prose for the majority of the book is lush and evocative, the last two chapters are jarringly, almost hastily written in a "summing up" fashion that distanced me even further. I truly couldn't have cared less by the end, and I wanted to. (I honestly envy those here who say they were incredibly moved, or who comment that it was the "best ending ever!" etc, as I just didn't see the beauty of what they saw. Not remotely.)

While I understand those who praise it -- yes, it's a lovely piece of writing -- I'm with the minority that feels this book is far more flash than substance. Frazier's is a truly unique voice who brings to life with some breathtaking moments, but to me, most of Cold Mountain is ultimately an artsy, dour backwoods Odyssey that sometimes feels like a writing exercise -- a grey journey of sadness in a dim brutal world.

I began this story without any sort of enthusiasm. I had decided that the boredom of reading a book of a movie I had already seen would be agonizing; however, I picked the novel up, and read on the inside cover, a quote by Darwin: " It is difficult to believe in the dreadful but quiet war of organic beings, going on in the peaceful woods, & smiling fields." This must have been when I understood the story was about to transport me to a time of fear and tolerance. A time of hate and beauty. A time of horror and insight. A time of love. That world seemed so far away, and I had never envisioned making such a connection to characters from so long ago. But the truth of the story does not die. It is a universal truth. Every person, everywhere questions his or her existence. Each and every one of us is curious enough to wonder why we are what we are, why we do what we do. Frazier simply wrote the anthem for us all. No matter our location, opinions, beliefs, whatever, we are all of inquisitive nature.
Frazier's eloquent language described the internal and external conflicts of each of the character's strife. His deep and cryptic imagery incorporates symbolism as well as beauty that paint a beautiful, intricate picture for the reader. Even more, Frazier is successfully able to illustrate the sound of fiddle music. I don't believe I've ever read a passage depicting the resonance of music that made me hear the music ringing in my ears:

This was softer, more meditative, yet nevertheless grim as death. When the minor key drifted in it was like shadows under trees, and the piece called up something of dark woods, lantern light. It was awful old music in one of the ancient modalities, music that sums up a culture and is the true expression of its inner life....Pangle's use of the thumb on the fifth string and dropping to the second was an especial thing of arrogant wonder. It was like the ringing of a dinner bell, yet solemn. His other two fingers worked in a mere hard, groping style, but one honed to brutish perfection...There was a deliberation, a study, to their clamping of the strings that was wholly absent from the reckless bowing of the right hand. What lyric Stobrod sang recounted a dream--his or some fictive speaker's--said to have been dreamed on a bed of hemlocks and containing a rich vision of lost love, the passage of awful time, a girl wearing a mantle of green. The words without music would have seemed hardly fuller in detail than a telegraphic message, but together they made a complete world.

When I read that, I could not begin to comprehend the enormity of the impact the book had had on me thus far. If looking for a run-of-the-mill Civil War story full of dashing young heroes and elegant Southern Belles, this book is not for you. This book tells so much more. It explains the beauty of love intertwined with the beauty of nature and destructions of war. This novel is beautiful. Well-written, explanatory, relevant, beautiful. Everyone should read it sometime or another.

Cold Mountain is superb, but it's very dense and slow moving, so it's obviously (judging from the wildly different reviews here) not for everybody. But I was held spellbound.
However, you kind of want a dictionary at your side when you read Cold Mountain, but just any dictionary won't do. Frazier uses farming terms from the era of which he writes, the American Civil War, and some of the names for those pieces of equipment simply won't appear in your pocket Webster's. But know what? Skip it. Just keep reading - and reading and reading and reading. It's a long book, but I finished it in about 2 days. It's that good.
Inman is a wounded soldier. Ada, his love, is back on Cold Mountain keeping the home fires burning. The book alternates between Ada's story of her life on the farm with Ruby, a loner who just materializes one day and offers to help run the man-less farm - and with Inman's story of trying to get back to Ada, wandering the countryside with grievous injuries, trying to keep out of the way of the bounty hunters and other baddies.
Frazier's novel is full of dense details of nature, farming, war, the countryside, and the social milieu of the 1860s. The prose is elegant, the details are said to be stunningly accurate, and the story is spellbinding. No wonder it won the National Book Award. Can't wait to see the film, tho I have trouble visualizing glamorous Renee Zelweger as the plain Ruby; if she manages to lose herself in that dificult part, she'll surely win an Oscar.

I consider myself a pretty sophisticated reader. But I share many of the same sentiments others have about the titanic struggle to conquer "Cold Mountain."

"Cold Mountain" has two primary stories. The first is about a wounded Civil War deserter named Inman who spends much of his time wandering home, facing obstacles to return to a beloved woman he hasn't seen in years. The second is about this beloved Ada and her friend Ruby, who transform the land upon which they live into a self-sufficient farm. Flashbacks recall things as they were between Inman and Ada before the war. These memories drive Inman home. Will he make it? If he does, will Ada remember? If she remembers, will she return his love? If these parallel stories intersect, will there be a good payoff?

I wish what I've described was as simple as the book. "Cold Mountain" reads like a reflective diary with microscopic details that do little to drive this plot quickly forward. Worse, UNLIKE a diary, it's told in the third person. It's not, "I thought this" or "I did that." It's "Inman thought this" and "Ada felt that." Yet this isn't a dumb book. Ambitious, yes, but trash this isn't.

But who wants to read something that feels like work? I wondered, "why am I torturing myself?" Just to prove I can do it because it won a big-time award? Just to be a pseudo-intellectual hot-shot? Of course I don't want an easy, dumbed-down read, but I don't want a biology, geology or botany lesson on every page. Yet I finished "Cold Mountain."

So why am I still giving it four stars?

First, some tips about how I got through it. Just like a mountain that can only be conquered in little steps, "Cold Mountain" requires, even for sophisticated readers, a level of concentration I haven't devoted to any book since college. Do NOT be distracted by noise, lest you be sent backward a few sentences or worse, a few paragraphs or pages. Savor the meaning of one sentence at a time. Go slow and read no more than one chapter per sitting. But keep at it. Don't stop in the middle of a chapter. You don't want to go back because you forgot where you left off. But if you start daydreaming about your job or a trip to the food court, stop.

Using this "disciplined" method of tackling "Cold Mountain" - by the time I got about a quarter of the way through - I started discovering TWO reasons why this book achieves excellence, albeit the kind that will forever polarize readers, and rightly so.

FIRST, "Cold Mountain" is a purposely challenging and romantic (yes it is), novel with many bloody, grimy and depressing details. It's difficult because it has none of the sentence structure with which we're accustomed. But my negative attitude began to shift when I realized the novel is written like an old museum relic, the only surviving account of thoughts from a random dead narrator from the 1860s.

Author Charles Frazier has accomplished the near impossible, recreating a style of historic writing that feels as Greek as reading Jane Austen or Shakespeare for the first time. Everything animal, mineral and vegetable is given character. The mood is beyond melancholy, and there's danger around every corner. Nothing feels certain.

SECOND, I began noticing, and not in any pretentious way, that every page in "Cold Mountain" had at least one or two nuggets of information made more beautiful through the eyes of a 19th century narrator ignorant of the 21st century. Stuff like:

"All that night the aurora flamed - and (the men) vied to see - who could most convincingly render its meaning down into plain speech."

"(Describing a mentally challenged young man): Everything he saw was (newly) minted, and thus every day was a parade of wonders."

"(Inman as he inspects a freshly covered grave): If (there's) a world beyond the grave as (the) hymns claim, such a hole (seems) a grim and lonesome portal to it."

I think most who dislike "Cold Mountain" are rightfully reacting to its tedious historical style and unconventional structure rather than the admittedly conventional story that lurks within its pages. But I also think, because I had the same negative reaction initially, that approaching this novel with more discipline, you might come away with greater respect for Frazier's ambitious effort to take a conventional romantic story and have it "re-told" - 19th century style - hence feeling unconventional compared to what's found in most present day bestsellers. It just stands out.

I'm glad I gave it another shot.

During the fall of 1998, this book was all the rage, everyone was talking about this National Book Award winning novel. Now that the dust has settled.... read this beautiful told set of stories. Set during the American Civil War, this is a bittersweet story of a wounded Confederate soldier who rises from his hospital bed near Petersburg and begins a long, hard journey home to his love in the Southern Blue Ridge Mountains. As a deserter, he faces the dangers of those who might kill him, or force him back to the fighting. As a wounded man he faces the possibility of death by infection and/or starvation. The novel follows two stories: The soldier, Inman, his trek and all he encounters on it; and Ada's (his love) who is learning, after the death of her beloved minister father, how to regenerate the farm and her life (with the help of a wonderful young orphaned woman named Ruby). The wild characters, episodes, and general interest of those two tales keep the reader engrossed until the very end. Unlike many love stories, there is little syrupy treacle to this tale, and you will find yourself silently cheering on both the protagonists in their individual "journeys".

I grew up almost within sight of Cold Mountain. It was my hills this fellow was writing about. I've read enough poignant tales about poor mountain folk (and heard enough Beverly Hillbillies jokes) make me touchy. Especially when I know the culture has been franchised into oblivion during the last twenty years.... so I picked up this book with trepidation.

A strong aversion to war tales and graphic horrors added another dose of mental caution. I forced myself through the first 100 pages. Some stories require telling. Some stories require reading. This one required both.

I made peace with my own aversions. I recognized a master storyteller spinning a good tale. I settled in for a good read. It is a story as twisted and turning and determined as creek coming off the Blue Ridge.

I saw a scene I still see today... an educated, well-refined soul finding themselves facing life on the mountain -- learning store-bought luxuries and book-learning do little to prepare one for the cold winds and hard winters, or even the overwhelming beauty of a perfect summer day. Frazier captured the culture lost -- authentic and proud. And I understood Inman's simplistic desire: if you get home to the mountains it will all be ok -- no matter how bad it is.

The story sings of dichotomies: the flatlands and the hills; the mountain young'un teaching the city-wise young lady; the tales of war -- the cruel and the bad and between it the tender and good; mountain life -- bitter yet serene, hard-scrabble poor yet rich to overflowing; and the oldest dichotomy of all: the dichotomy of love and pain. And the dichotomies stayed with me long after the good read was over.

It was my hills this fellow was writing about.