Cold Mountain (original 1997; edition 1997)

One of my most favorite books of all time. The movie, not so much.
( )

This is a compelling novel about a wounded Civil War deserter and his heroic, almost superhuman efforts to return home and to the girl he thinks he loves. Meanwhile, the girl, an ex-Southern Belle, is struggling to survive after the death of her father, without ever having learned how to garden or cook or keep house. As this book deals with the harsh realities of war and life and death in 19th century America, it is very graphic and gory in parts.

Cold Mountain is a lyrical exploration of nature and love in the liminal space between life and death. It is a war novel that takes place far from the battlefield. As an exploration of how it felt to be among the living and the walking dead in American South during the Civil War I found it extremely convincing.

The experience of authenticity comes not only because the author mimics 19th century cadences and vocabulary (although he does that too) but because he creates characters and situations which feel deeply plausible, persuasively true to their world. The author's characters seem to fully inhabit their era, their social stations, and their natural world.

There are echoes of Twain here, encounters with strange people and country ways, as our protagonist moves on his journey toward home. The author devotes much of the book to lyrical description of the natural world, which seems suited to the problem of conveying the inner world of people who lived so connected to that world. The author knows horses (he raises them in reality, the book jacket informs us) and this knowledge shows, but he seems to know the whole of the Southern natural world too.

The female character Ada, and her friend Ruby, seem to me to be well imagined and described, respectively, as a city woman who has moved to the country, and a woman so country she is half wolf child. As we read we cannot doubt that such people existed, and that they must have thought thoughts not unlike these. Even the limited intimacies, emotional and sexual, that are ultimately portrayed feel authentic to what it would be possible for people in that time and place to feel and do.

With all this talk about authenticity and historical accuracy, you might say that I've viewed the novel through a rather limited lens. But I'd argue that this is historical fiction, and it deserves to be read and examined in the context of its claimed place and time. That in any case, is what interests me most about it.

Read it? Yes, obviously, this must be read. It goes deep, and it keeps it real in a deep 19th century sense, or uses a special magic to convince the reader that it is doing so, which surely amounts to something similar. ( )

Beautifully written, completely engrossing and a gut-wrencher. It took me a short while to get into but was well worth it. I could not put it down at the end and powered through 150 pages on the last day, which is a feat for this slow reader. ( )