Cold Mountain

Another book I had heard about but didn't really know anything about. It sat on my shelf for over five years. Sigh.

This is an excellent civil war story. Not just because of the depth of detail about the time but because the characters are beautifully drawn, and ultimately they drive the story.

It is a love story. But not like any other I've read. We learn very little about the interactions between the two main characters, except through their memories, and even then it's sketchy. We do, however, get to know them individually, as they cope with the situations they have inherited.

Inman is a confederate soldier who has been wounded badly. He finds himself in a hospital where patients do a lot of fending for themselves, and ultimately show more decides his better move is to get out, away from the fighting, away from the war, and back to Cold Mountain, where he grew up. To Ada. Ada, raised in Charleston, educated, sophisticated, finds herself in Cold Mountain alone, with no real skills, coping with a farm her father took on more as a hobby than as a functioning concern. Many ask her when she is going to return to Charleston, because they can't imagine her staying on.

And so Inman leaves the hospital and hits the trail. Knowing little about where he is or where anything is, really, he works his way back toward Cold Mountain over a period of many weeks. Weeks when he might get caught and sent back into battle. Weeks when he meets up with others who may be of help or may be the death of him. Weeks without money or goods to trade. Other reviewers call is an American Odyssey, a Whitmanesque foray. Yes, those terms fit.

Meanwhile, Ada meets her savior, Ruby, a rough country woman who knows nothing of books but plenty about getting by.

I was about a third of the way into it when I realized I loved this book. It met all of my expectations. show less

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 show more 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. show less

How long would you wait for your lover, if you knew not whether they were alive, and you yourself had changed almost beyond recognition?

This is a beautiful, understated, unsentimental Odyssey of quiet longing, endurance, and transformation.

"This journey will be the axle of my life."
Inman's journey is across hundreds of dangerous miles, fleeing war and trying to get to where his love lives, four years after they parted.

"She had made her way to a place where an entirely other order prevailed from what she had always known."
Ada's journey takes place within a few miles of her home.

It's no coincidence that Inman's treasured book is a travel book (whereas Ruby "held a deep distrust of travel", even to the shops).

Times are tough, but at show more least Ada and Inman have confidence in who and what it is they yearn for.

Structure

Most of the novel alternates between Ada’s and Inman's separate struggles to survive, with backstory gradually provided by their reminiscences. Each of Inman's chapters involves a dramatic encounter, good or bad, that sheds light on his character, as well as the trials of war and wilderness. Ada is 26, orphaned, nearly destitute, and trying to cope with a little land, but no staff or skill. The varying tempo works well.

Both Inman and Ada cultivate the art of really seeing: Inman is ever watchful, noticing every little sign in nature or people's behaviour that may signal danger (a shadow behind leaves, a blade hidden in a hairdo); Ada learns to see the signs of seasons, weather, harvest, birds, and animals.

The language is sometimes a little archaic, as it should be. Quotation marks are not used, but I didn't really feel their absence: dialog is usually prefaced with a long dash.

Civil War

Although the backdrop is the American civil war, I didn't feel hampered by my relative lack of knowledge of US history. There was enough background detail to picture daily life, but the politics and the war were external to the characters, and hence to me as a reader.

Right and Wrong; Revenge and Forgiveness

Inman is a deserter: badly injured, but a deserter none-the-less. He was never a natural killer, is haunted by what he's seen (and done), and doesn't believe in the cause anyway, if he ever did. There are gangs wanting bounty for finding deserters, and desperate men who will kill for any reason and none. Coupled with his inherently peaceful and forgiving nature, repeatedly put to the test, the risks are great.

Pondering the story of a man born blind, Inman asks himself "What would be the cost of not having an enemy? Who could you strike for retribution other than yourself?"

But retribution isn't really his mindset; he's almost too good to be true, given the hardships and dangers he faces, such as stealing food, but leaving more money than it's worth, putting himself in grave danger to help strangers,and avoiding and preventing violence, even when it's not really his responsibility and would be easier to walk away. He's certainly more forgiving than the disgraced preacher, Veasey.

The Sustenance of Literature - and Music

An unexpected pleasure was the underlying thread of the solace to be found in books.

On the very first page, Inman is in military hospital "settling his mind" with a treasured copy of Travels of William Bartram. Throughout the story, he returns to this book, in small snippets, at times of need. When he's reunited with Ada, he reads her an extract.

Ada's relationship with books fluctuates: at her lowest point "the characters seemed to lead fuller lives than she did", and when she's first dragooned into hard labour to make the land viable, she drops the habit of keeping a book in her pocket. However, at the end of the day, reading aloud is a pleasure and a bonding experience for her and Ruby. We glimpse the privilege of opening someone's eyes to the joys of powerful stories.

Another, seemingly irredeemable, character finds salvation in music, starting off with a handful of standard fiddle tunes, but making his own instruments and composing a large repertoire of moving pieces. "The grouping of sounds... said something comforting to him about the rule of creation,... a powerful argument against the notion that things just happen."

Couples

At least as important as the relationship between Ada and Inman, and possibly more interesting, is that between Ada (educated, city girl, now alone in the country) and Ruby (an illiterate who was an almost feral child). She comes to help Ada, not quite as a servant, not - initially - as a friend, let alone equal, but Ruby takes charge of instructing in the sense of educating Ada and even telling her what, when, and how to do. "To Ada, Ruby's monologues seemed composed mainly of verbs, all of them tiring" and "Ruby made a point of refusing to tackle all the unpleasant tasks herself." Ada puts up with this because she realises that "Ruby would not let her fail", whereas a hired hand might just walk away.

There are moments when you wonder how far Ada and Ruby's friendship will go: when Ruby puts Ada's bracelet on her own wrist - but then puts it back again; when Ada slips a ring on Ruby's finger - which Ruby takes off. The latter is just after Inman has returned, and Ruby has said "We can do without him... There's not a thing we can't do ourselves." But when she realises Ada loves Inman, she backtracks completely, and tactfully contrives to leave them alone..

Inman draws strength from his devotion to and memories of Ada. He occasionally looks at other women (water is a recurring theme), but it's all very chaste. Even when the young widow who's just lost her child, asks him to share her bed without touching, nothing happened nor did he really want it to.

Then there's Ruby's estranged, good-for-nothing father, Stobrod, and Ada's role in handling and healing their relationship.

Nature Names

There is mythical power in names. Ada's education was academic and theoretical: she knows the names of almost none of the plants and animals, and that is part of her helplessness in her new situation. In contrast, Ruby has an encyclopaedic knowledge of such things, and thus she takes the lead in survival.

Ruby is also guided by signs that Ada's preacher father, Monroe, would have dismissed as superstition. Ada "chose to view the signs as metaphoric... a way of being alert" so that "she could honor them". But a hundred pages later, she writes to her cousin in Charleston about how field work has changed her, "Should a crow fly over I mark it in all its details, but I do not seek analogy for its blackness... I suspect it is somehow akin to contentment." It's worth noting that the first chapter is titled "the shadow of a crow" and the last "spirits of crows, dancing".

The Ending and the Epilogue

Twenty pages from the end, it was so tender and understated and perfect that I had to pause. I was sure it would end badly, and I couldn't bear it.

The reunion of Ada and Inman is wonderfully, but unsentimentally, done. He finds her, dressed like a man, hunting turkeys, rather than in the fine skirts he'd remembered. She doesn't recognise him, so he apologies and walks away. When she does recognise him (by his voice), there are no dramas, just tentative steps towards an unknown present and even less certain future. "No previous formula of etiquette seemed to apply." Even when left alone, they're unsure what to do - so Inman reads a passage from Bartram... and then does the washing up! But eventually they talk, "to rewrite even a shard of the past" as lover do "before they can move forward paired". Eventually, "The world was such a lonely place, and to lie down beside him, skin to skin, seemed the only cure."

Then they plan their future. "Their whole lives stretched ahead of them" but also "youth was about over for them and what lay ahead was another country entirely, wherein the possibilities narrowed down moment by moment." It's all too good to be last. Inman is shot by Teague's gang. Ada gets to him in time to hold him as he dies.

This is a horrible symmetry with much earlier mention of what happened to Ada's own parents, who met and loved when young, were separated for years, and joyfully reunited, but only very briefly, before one of them died.

The epilogue compensates for the tragedy of Inman's death by showing Ada and her daughter living happily with Ruby, Ruby's husband, their children, and Ruby's reformed father. However, without that, the final scene would be touching and, slightly ambiguous, which I think I prefer.

Reminds me Of

(The links are to my reviews of these books.)

The quiet stoicism, solace in literature, and connection to the soil, reminded me of one of my two favourite books, Stoner.

The almost literal saving power of books in the midst of turmoil and deprivation is something Jeanette Winterson stresses in Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?.

The harsh beauty of the mountains, coupled with love and longing, reminded me a little of Brokeback Mountain. The similarity of title may be a factor, too.

Quotes

* "The first smear of foggy dawn and [he] waited for the world to begin shaping outside."

* "Nature... sometimes calls attention to its specific features and recommends them for interpretation."

* "Educated beyond the point considered wise for females" but "impractically for the demands of an exposed life".

* "Though not a childless couple, they had retained an air of romance in their marriage, as the barren often do."

* "The foul country... was vague and ominous in the moonlight."

* "He would like to love the world as it was... Hate took no effort other than to look about."

* "When it became too dark to read and the air turned blue and started to congeal with mist."

* "Celebration had been a lacking feature of her life since survival had such a sharp way of focusing one's attention elsewhere."

* "She had lived so long as to have achieved a state of near transparency."

* Gypsies had "a fine honesty in their predatory relationship with the rest of mankind." I know what he means, but...

* "Dying there seemed easier than not... Inman had seen so much death it had come to seem a random thing... it no longer seemed dark and mysterious. He feared... he might never make a civilian."

* "The easement of maiden, spinster, widow", though if your knowledge of anatomy is "to a degree hypothetical", your fantasies may focus on fingers, wrists and forearms.

* A path "so coiled and knotted he could not say what its general tendency was... He felt fuddled and wayless."

* "Marrying a woman for her beauty makes no more sense than eating a bird for its singing."

* "The pain settled to a distant noise, like living by a river."

* In a dead man's clothes "he felt he had donned the husk of another life... as a ghost must, occupying the shape of the past to little effect."

* "A suggestion of trees as in a quick sketch, a casual gesture toward the form of trees... as if there were no such thing as landscape."

* "The sentimentality of finding poignancy in the fall of leaves, of seeing it as the conclusion to the year and therefore metaphoric."

UPDATE re the Film

If you love this book, or think you may read and love it in the future, avoid the the 2003 film starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and Renée Zellweger.

It's not that it's an awful film (though the acting, accents, and very fake-looking snow and scenery are pretty poor), and it's not the many (very many) tweaks they made to the plot (some are inevitable with any adaptation from one medium to another).

No, the problem is that it seems to miss the entire point and atmosphere of the book. By a long, long way. There are some gory battle scenes, but in general, it's a sunny romance. The sun is shining far too much of the time, even in Inman's dangerous travels, most of the hardship is soft-focus, the power of the landscape is mostly missing, and the power of books is sidelined. Inman's Bartram is important, but only because, in the film, it was Ada's parting gift, so it's a memento from a lover, rather than something separate, but more profound. show less

Set in 1864 near the end of the American Civil War, Inman has been traumatized by his experiences in battle. After being wounded, he deserts his hospital bed to travel home to North Carolina’s Cold Mountain, to reconnect with a woman he met before leaving to join the Confederacy. The woman, Ada Monroe, has led a privileged life, but the war takes its toll, and she is left to fend for herself on her father’s farm. Inman journeys hundreds of miles by foot, encountering an assortment of people and trying to avoid the Confederate Home Guard. Ada transforms her life with help of Ruby, a woman who knows how to work the land. The storyline shifts back and forth between Inman and Ada.

The book is somewhat slow in developing and episodic in show more nature. The characters are well-developed and believable. I pictured Ruby as a person of mixed-race, though it is not stated directly, and I believe this added to my appreciation of the story. One of the primary strengths is the writing. Frazier has a wonderful way with words in describing the beauty of the natural environment and its impact upon the characters. I enjoyed the setup of the two connected characters struggling with their separate challenges and the way the author portrays their motivations to live when it would be easy to give up.

There are dark and disturbing scenes in this book involving harm to people and animals. The novel is loosely based on the author’s family history. Frazier does a fabulous job of evoking the era –showing the horrible impact of the war, how it tore families apart, and how people longed for a sense of stability. The last quarter of the book is a brilliant piece of writing.

4.5 show less

Set in the final month of the Civil War, Cold Mountain intertwines the stories of Inman, a Confederate soldier, and Ada, the daughter of a minister who shortly before the start of the conflict moved with her father from Charleston to Black Cove, a village in Southern Appalachia, a place overlooked by Cold Mountain. Inman was born and raised in the area, and shortly before enlisting, Inman had begun a tentative romance with Ada. At the story’s beginning, Inman is hospitalized after being wounded in the Battle of Petersburg. After years of army service, and traumatized by what he’s seen—questioning his involvement in the war—he decides to desert and walk back to his home in Black Cove where he hopes to find Ada still waiting for show more him. Meanwhile, Ada has fallen on hard times after her father’s death. She has inherited the farm he purchased after moving to the village, but as a city girl, she knows nothing about farming or hard work, and the stocks her father had invested in before the war are now worthless. With autumn setting in, she’s faced the prospect of starving if she remains there.

An odyssey that will take him weeks to complete, Inman sets off on foot to return home. His travels take him through a landscape ravaged by warfare, and he needs to stay on back trails to avoid the Home Guard patrolling the region. If captured, he will be forced to return to the army or possibly be executed for desertion. Along the way, Inman struggles to stave off hunger and is occasionally helped by others, but there is always the threat that he will be turned in as a deserter. The story flashes back and forth between his journey and Ada’s dilemma of keeping herself fed throughout the coming winter. She is rescued by an unlikely savior, Ruby, a young woman who appears one day on Ada’s porch. Ruby has grown up in the vicinity and, for the most part, has had to raise herself with no mother and a more often than not absent alcoholic father. Knowledgeable about farming and living off the land, Ruby offers her services to Ada, and the two women begin the work of utilizing the farm’s resources to fill the larders. In the process, the two forge a deep friendship.

When published in 1997, Cold Mountain won the National Book Award for Fiction. It is a well deserved honor. This was Charles Frazier’s debut novel, and his beautiful prose vividly brings to life the rugged Southern Appalachian landscape, its rural populace, and the horrors of a conflict that brought both hunger and lawlessness to its communities. The book is filled with fascinating characters, and throughout, Cold Mountain itself plays a central role. This is my second reading of the novel, and just like the first time, it held me spellbound. It does contain violence, and heartbreak too, but for anyone wanting to get a better understanding of what life was like during the waning days of the Civil War in the South, Cold Mountain is a must-read. show less

Book on CD read by the author

A wounded soldier walks away from the hospital, determined to return to his love on Cold Mountain. Meanwhile that young woman, raised to be a flower of Southern womanhood, is finding her way alone, with the help of a homeless waif with reserves of strength and the knowledge to survive.

This is a slow study in character and what matters most. Inman has fought valiantly but no longer recognizes the purpose for which he is fighting, and wants nothing more than to return to Ada and Cold Mountain, and be let alone to live in peace.

Ada was cherished by her father after her mother died giving birth to her. She’s been educated, had trips to Europe, studied piano, and dressed in the latest finery. When her show more father’s doctors suggest that a move to the mountains will improve his ailing health, they leave muggy Charleston for a small stead on Cold Mountain. She is a hot-house orchid in a field of wildflowers. She can speak French and read Latin, but doesn’t know how to cook, tend a vegetable garden or milk a cow; she lacks the skills to survive.

Ruby is a homeless waif, whose father would rather drink and fiddle than care for his only child. She has fended for herself about as long as she could walk. She comes to Ada with a proposition – she will help Ada manage the farm, in exchange for her own place to live and an equal partnership.

What I loved most about the novel was the relationships between and personal growth of the women – Ada and Ruby – how they moved from dependent/superior to an equal partnership and true friendship. They grew to recognize and admire one another’s strengths, put their differences aside and developed a true and genuine trust between them born of hard work and repeated small tests. While Ada and Inman’s bond was ethereal and romantic, the bond between Ada and Ruby was grounded in the North Carolina soil and woods they called home. Had Sherman marched his forces through their cove I’d bet on Ruby and Ada to get the best of the federals.

The novel moves back and forth between Ada/Ruby and Inman, giving different perspectives on this time during the Civil War. Inman lived much more on the knife’s edge between survival and death, and his chapters were more suspenseful. While Ada and Ruby were no less in danger of losing their lives and /or livelihood (as was brought out by several of the people and situations Inman encountered), they did seem to lead a relatively “charmed” life – hard work, yes, but less danger for the most part.

Charles Frazier read the audio version himself. This was a mistake. He has no skill at all as a voice artist, and his reading was slow, ponderous and lacked inflection. I thought I would just fall asleep to his droning as I drove to and from work. It was the quality of his writing that saved the work for me. Were I evaluating the book based on the audio it would get only 2 stars. show less

In September 1864, wounded Confederate soldier W. P. Inman leaves the rural Virginia hospital where he’s been convalescing and lights out for home, without furlough papers. It’s a risky move. Irregulars comb the countryside for deserters, and if they catch him, the only question is whether they’ll kill him immediately or bring him to the nearest town for execution. But he hates the war, which he feels never had purpose, aside from protecting wealthy slaveholders’ property, and combat has scarred his psyche so badly, he’s ready to take his chances.

He hopes to meet up with Ada Monroe, a woman back in Cold Mountain, western North Carolina, whom he hasn’t seen since the war began. They’ve exchanged letters, but Inman doesn’t show more know whether they ever had an “understanding,” or, if they did, whether Ada will care for him now, in his emotionally damaged state.

But Ada has her own troubles—and a journey to make. Her father, a preacher, has just died, leaving her with a farm gone to seed because of wartime labor shortages and no skills or resources to maintain the place. The late Monroe encouraged—nay, required—his daughter to cultivate her mind and sense of gentility, so that she must never lift a finger in anything remotely resembling physical labor.

As a consequence, Ada’s extremely literate, plays the piano (stolidly), and can draw, but she hasn’t a clue about raising crops or animals, or about the natural environment on which her existence would depend if she operated the farm. However, she has only one alternative: returning to Charleston, where she was born, throwing herself on the mercy of relatives she never liked, and settling for a husband who’d probably not appreciate her independent mind.

Cold Mountain bears a slight resemblance to the Odyssey, in that Inman, as Odysseus, must endure myriad misadventures and combats to return to Penelope, whom he dares not presume is waiting for him. His narrative is therefore episodic, full of reversals and derring-do. Like Odysseus, he’s clever and needs to be; unlike him, though, he’s not malign. Not ever. Rather, he assists people in distress as he meets them and never surrenders to temptation. He’s more of a knight-errant than an adventurer, and maybe too good to be true.

Meanwhile, Ada has received a tremendous stroke of luck in the form of Ruby Thewes, who shows up because a friend has said Ada needs help. Ruby has no refinement, book learning, or soft feelings but knows all there is to know about the soil, the barnyard, and how to read the seasons. I like that Ada’s tutelage comes hard and that her journey is both internal and external, unlike Inman’s, who seems fully formed. Rather, Ada must shed her old life, and this minute wouldn’t be too soon. I also like how she reads to Ruby, her turn to pass on what she knows, and how they disagree as to what happiness is, or whether it’s even worth bothering about.

Her story moves me more than Inman’s, by far. Ada grows as a character, whereas he doesn’t, and whatever changes he’s gone through, you see them hazily in aftermath rather than in transition. During his odyssey, one physical conflict is much like another, and none stand out for me, either in themselves or what he learns from them. Conversely, her narrative feels more cohesive, and she transforms before your eyes—not without a struggle, which adds to her portrayal. Her obstacles, though daunting, seldom feel ridiculously insurmountable, so she seems more human, less larger-than-life.

Maybe the greatest pleasure of Cold Mountain is the prose, which has been justly celebrated, and which conveys the characters’ physical and emotional realms with vividness and precision. I also admire Frazier’s refusal to sugarcoat human nature, and his depiction of lawless, bloodthirsty, and greedy behavior is both real and appalling. If ever a novel did justice to the brutality Americans visited upon each other during those years, this one does. This is a vision of the Civil War that has rarely, if ever, appeared in fictional form.

Nevertheless, the narrative compromises that vision with a romantic underlay, and Cold Mountain is less satisfying for it. As with Varina, Frazier appears to argue that nobody really wanted secession or believed in the war except for a slim majority who held wealth and power. Somehow, I don’t think that’s how the Civil War lasted that long. But in any case, Frazier’s perspective whitewashes his characters while trivializing the history. show less