Cold Mountain

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.

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 received "Cold Mountain" as a gift (Thanks, MOM!) and didn't really know anything about the book. So I decided to try a sort of test I do on fiction--I opened the book at random and read a sample of the prose to get a feel for the style. Here's what I read:>>One of the things Inman marked as a comfort was that he could put a name to the brightest star in Orion. He had shared that fact with a Tennessee boy on the night after Fredricksburg....<p> Before them was the battlefield falling away to the town and the river. The land lay bleak as nightmare and seemed to have been recast to fit a new and horrible model, all littered with bodies and churned up by artillery. Hell's newground, one man had called it. To turn his mind from such a place that night, Inman had looked toward Orion and said the name he know. The Tennessee boy had peered up at the star so indicated and said, How do you know its name is Rigel?<br>--I read it in a book, Inman said.<br>--Then that's just a name we give it, the boy said. It ain't God's name.<br> Inman had though on the issue a minute and then said, How would you ever come to know God's name for that star?<br>--You wouldn't, He holds it close, the boy said. It's a thing you'll never know. It's a lesson that sometimes we're meant to settle for ignorance. <<<p>Within seconds I was totally drawn in to the interaction of the characters and at the same time my jaw was dropping open because the prose style was so wonderful. This debut novel of Charles Frazier is amazing. <p>HOWEVER...if you expect this to be a Civil War novel, complete with battles, or the machinations of frothy Southern Belles, you will be sadly disappointed. So don't read "Cold Mountain" for what it is not. It is really about journeys through trials, both external and internal. The main character Inman is wounded in a Civil War battle. His wound should have been mortal, but wasn't. He begins a long walk back to his home in the mountains of North Carolina, not only to avoid being drawn back into the horrors of the war but also to find his soul again, wounded as deeply by what he saw as by the ball that gashed his neck.<p>He's also coming back to Ada, who is traveling her own journey from a life of gentility and refusal to face reality, to scraping a survival living on her amateurishly managed farm. Her savior is Ruby, a woman whose raw drive and will to survive floats the hopeless Ada along in her inexorable wake.<p>The story of the three characters (Ada, Ruby and Inman) is woven so skillfully that I found it almost impossible to put the book down. But I forced myself to read it in segments because I didn't want to miss savoring the exquisite prose. This is the best novel I've read in years. Don't miss it.

First, if you have an underdeveloped intellect and/or short attention span, please avoid Cold Mountain as this book is not for you.Second, if you were forced against your will to read this book (for class) please refrain from writing a review. If you read a book in a pissy mood from the start you probably won't enjoy it no matter how good it is. Third, this book is not ABOUT the Civil War. It is SET during the civil war years but is about the journeys (both spiritual and physical) of individual people during a time of great change.It is depressing that this masterpiece currently has a measily 3.5 star rating here. Cold Mountain is beautifully written, with each chapter (and often paragraph or sentence) being a poem unto itself. Extraordinary use of detail creates such vivid imagery that colors, sounds, smells, and tastes seem to leap from the pages. Charles Frazier superbly captures the quest of the two main characters as they search to find their true selves amidst the crazy world that tries to hide it from them. A modern classic.