Frazier writes beautifully and songbirds landed on my shoulders while I read, rather like a dreamy scene from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. More than most, I drool over a banquet of sumptuous prose. Of course, the enlightened readers among us can get by without them but, applying the same logic, why bother with commas and full stops? In fact, let's go the whole hog and eliminate vowels as well! Huh! Bloody vowels, making words much longer than they need to be! Why, Charles Frazier? Why? They were evidently good enough for Dickens, Hugo and Dostoyevsky yet, for some artsy reason, you didn't feel the need. One of my pet peeves is seeing dialogue that isn't neatly nestled between some perfectly respectable speech marks. So I'll just get my two gripes out of the way, then we can all sit down and have a nice cup of tea… You can see from my five-star rating that I was captivated by this book, but it could just have easily been demoted to three stars as it was very nearly hoisted by a petard of its own poetic prose. Inman (not as heroic as Odysseus), an army deserter wounded in the American Civil War, faces a treacherous, interminable journey home to his love, Ada ( ergo Odysseus’s Penelope). Having recently read The Odyssey, I was prompted by Goodreads friend, to go on this journey - namely, Homer's epic voyage transposed to the terrain of 19th-century North America. "Be strong, saith my heart I am a soldier I have seen worse sights than this." Without giving away any spoilers, I'll only state that I thought the ending was the only possible one offered in a world consumed by war.Ĭross posted at This Insignificant Cinder Of the reviews I've read, most readers disliked the novel's ending. It may be because of the violence that is still latent within him that Inman struggles so with the world and his place in it. After killing indiscriminately in war, he's determined to do no harm unless it's absolutely unavoidable. Inman is a man who is capable of violence, but only when necessary. Ironically, those offering the greatest kindnesses are those who are the most excluded from society (slaves and women). While he time and again encounters people wallowing in depravity and sin in a seemingly lawless world, he also encounters along this hellish journey acts of selflessness and kindness that serve as balm to his soul when he's on the cusp of losing all hope. His is a Dante-like journey through the "Inferno" of the American South (comparisons could also be made to Homer's The Odyssey). Of the two alternating narratives, I found Inman's the most compelling. What may seem like lengthy transcendentalist-like descriptions of nature actually serve to reveal the inner life of each character and enrich the narrative. To have done so would have stripped the novel of its power as it examines the lives of both Inman and Ada, a Southern belle woefully unprepared to exist in the harsh mountain landscape of Cold Mountain when she finds herself all alone. That is not to say that Frazier wastes the reader's time or goes off on unnecessary tangents (although for those who like quick narratives, it may seem that way), but he is in no hurry to rush the novel to its conclusion. It's not for the faint of heart, however, as it's time consuming and requires a great deal of patience as Frazier takes his time with his descriptions of the landscape and the people as Inman, a soldier broken in spirit by the futility and waste of the Civil War, decides to walk home to Ada and his beloved Cold Mountain. Cold Mountain recreates a world gone by that speaks to our time.Ĭold Mountain is quite possibly the most beautiful book that I've ever read. He also shares with the great 19th century novelists a keen observation of a society undergoing change. As their long-separated lives begin to converge at the close of the war, Inman & Ada confront the vastly transformed world they’ve been delivered.įrazier reveals insight into human relations with the land & the dangers of solitude. His odyssey thru the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South interweaves with Ada’s struggle to revive her father’s farm, with the help of an intrepid young drifter named Ruby. At once a love story & a harrowing account of one man’s long walk home, Cold Mountain introduces a new talent in American literature.īased on local history & family stories passed down by Frazier’s great-great-grandfather, Cold Mountain is the tale of a wounded Confederate soldier, Inman, who walks away from the ravages of the war & back home to his prewar sweetheart, Ada. Based on the novel by Charles Frazier.Cold Mountain is a novel about a soldier’s perilous journey back to his beloved near the Civil War's end. In the waning days of the American Civil War, a wounded soldier (Law) embarks on a perilous journey back home to Cold Mountain, North Carolina to reunite with his sweetheart (Kidman).
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