Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Reviewed by L.D.Y.
Trade, 449 pages, 1997
Rating: 7/10
Reason for Reading: I initially noticed this one at a used bookstore, but wasn’t really intrigued by the war setting. After I saw the movie, though, which I really liked, I changed my mind.
Synopsis: America’s civil war has divided a nation in thought and on a personal level. The story is told in the alternating viewpoints of Ada, a delicate belle left to fend for herself on a farm, and Inman, a wounded soldier that doesn’t care about the cause anymore and just wants to return home. In the book, we see the struggle for survival, both in finding a way to live and finding a reason to want to live.
Why you should read this book: The writing is good, full of descriptions of the forces of nature that Ada and Inman are each trying to survive in their own ways. Frazier doesn’t pull any punches with his descriptions of war. There’s no glorified heroism and patriotism, just a delicate balance between looking out for number one while trying not to become hardened to the lives of others. There’s a good cast of secondary characters, from people Inman meets briefly on his travels, to Ruby, a no-nonsense farmer with big ideas.
Why you should avoid this book: If the story wasn’t told in the alternating viewpoints of Ada and Inman, you likely wouldn’t even notice that they had ever met, much less see any romantic tension. Pining away for three hundred pages is one thing, but a half a dozen pages of interaction between the two hardly holds up a sense of connection or suspense between the two stories. It almost feels like Frazier was trying so hard not to ’stoop’ to Harlequin sentimentality that he forgot that even in ‘literature’ a love story needs love for the reader to care about the characters. Kind of a disappointment after the movie. (Now, there’s a rarity.)
Opening paragraph:
At the first gesture of morning, flies began stirring. Inman’s eyes and the long wound at his neck drew them, and the sound of their wings and the touch of their feet were soon more potent than a yardful of roosters in rousing a man to wake. So he came to yet one more day in the hospital ward. He flapped the flies away with his hands and looked across the foot of his bed to an open triple-hung window. Ordinarily he could see to the red road and the oak tree and the low brick wall. And beyond them to a sweep of fields and flat piney woods that stretched to the western horizon. The view was a long one for the flatlands, the hospital having been built on the only swell within eyeshot. But it was too early yet for a vista. The window might as well have been painted grey.
Fabulous quotes:
A hole opened up at the back of the canoe at waterline. Brown water streamed in at the alarming rate of a cow pissing. Inman looked ahead to the landing and saw a party of a half-dozen men milling about in the moonlight. Some of them began firing their little pistols, but they had not the carrying power to cover the distance. The man with the rifle, though, had it turned up and was working with the ramrod to tamp in a fresh load. The only way Inman could figure it, the men must have framed the evening in their minds as a type of coon hunt, as sport; otherwise they would have long since gone back to town.
Tired as she was, though, she had found herself over and over rising from true sleep into a foggy hovering state of partial wakefulness, a fretful hybrid of sleep and wake partaking of the worst aspects of each. She felt she was raking and pitching hay all through the night. When she roused enough to open her eyes, she saw the black shadows of tree limbs moving in the block of moonlight cast across the floorboards, and the shapes seemed unaccountably troubling and ominous. Then, sometime in the night, clouds blacked out the moon and rain feel hard and Ada finally fell asleep.
Also recommended: The Hours by Michael Cunningham; Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks; The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys.
Also by this author: Thirteen Moons.
Awards: National Book Award: Winner, 1997
© Lisa Yanaky 2003-2007
March 24th, 2004 at 7:40 am
I read Cold Mountain before I knew they were making a movie, and I thought it was really good.
You said:
The story wasn’t told in the alternating viewpoints of Ada and Inman, you likely wouldn’t even notice that they had ever met, much less see any romantic tension.
I understand what you’re saying here, but I didn’t find it to be a real weakness of the book. Their “romance” was barely a romance at all, but it was something for them to hang their hopes on and motivate them to keep the faith. I’m not explaining this well, but I liked the individual stories of Inman and Ada, and I liked that the thread of connection between them was so thin and yet so strong. That’s what I wasn’t disappointed by the ending. That was the only way Frazier could have made the story work, in my opinion. If it had been the traditional “happily ever after”, I would have thrown down the book in disgust.
Love the site, by the way!
March 24th, 2004 at 11:14 pm
I very much see your points, and I tried so, so hard not to compare it to the movie, but I know this is one time I don’t think I quite succeeded :) Still, I think they both have their own merits and are worth reading & watching.
& thanks, glad you like the site :)
April 7th, 2004 at 7:48 am
I saw the film first, that was what made me read the book. I prolly should have left longer between seeing the film and the book though as I did compare the two quite a bit.
Still really enjoyed the book, but think I will like it even more if I reread it later when the film has faded more.
April 21st, 2004 at 1:02 pm
Having seen both the book and the movie (but reading the book first) - I felt a similiar sense of disappointment, just in reverse. I think the discrepancy lies in the fact that Hollywood tried to make a love-story sort of movie about a book that is really about the horrors of the Civil War.