Cold mountain6/18/2023 “Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain is the most impressive and enthralling first novel I have read in a long time. “A beautiful book, written in exquisite prose.” “This is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, and I cried when it was over. “A superb novel–thrilling, richly detailed and powerful. Cold Mountain is one of the great accomplishments in American literature.” It seems even more possible to never want to read another book, so wonderful is this one. “This novel is so magnificent–in every conceivable aspect, and others previously unimagined–that it has occurred to me that the shadow of this book, and the joy I received in reading it, will fall over every other book I ever read. elegantly told and convincing down to the last haunting detail.” “Deserves all the literary prizes that might be lying about.” A beautifully written love story, with much to discuss.” “A parallel narrative: Inman is seriously injured at the end of the Civil War and begins a dangerous journey home, and Ada has struggled to learn firsthand how to keep alive on her family farm. About loneliness and isolation and reaching out.” Open this book to any page and you will find a description, simile, metaphor or word choice to take you breath away.” “Frazier’s spare prose is rich in detail and nuance and never misses a beat in evoking the Civil War-era South. Civil War buffs, old-time music devotees and love-story suckers–there’s something in this book for everyone” Inman’s gripping odyssey alternates with the story of princess-turned-pauper Ada. “ Cold Mountain offers compelling glimpses into the surreal horrors of. You’ll find the characters living in your head for a long time.” Frazier has inhaled the spirit of the age and breathes it into the reader’s being.” “A remarkable first novel, a romance of love, of friendship, of family, of land. "Rich in evocative physical detail and timeless human insight, this debut novel set in the Civil War era rural South considers themes both grand (humanity's place in nature) and intimate (a love affair transformed by the war) as a wounded soldier makes his way home to the highlands of North Carolina and to his prewar sweetheart." “The novel is above all a sustained flight of the imagination.” “This novel’s landscape is finely drawn, full of dark beauty and presentiment, and so are its characters.” “As close to a masterpiece as American writing is going to come these days.” “A great read–a stirring Civil War tale told with epic sweep loaded with vivid historical detail.” In its vivid evocation of a time and place, its steady storytelling momentum, and its unabashed affirmation of a fiction that takes moral choice seriously, Cold Mountain calls to mind Snow Falling on Cedars.” Wonderfully convincing, finely detailed.” The genuinely romantic saga of Ada and Inman is a page turner that attains the status of literature.” Alfred Kazin, The New York Review of Books He has written an astonishing first novel.” “Charles Frazier’s feeling for the Southern landscape is reverential and beautifully composed. James Polk, The New York Times Book Review a Whitmanesque foray into America: into its hugeness, its freshness, its scope and its soul.” “Charles Frazier has taken on a daunting task–and has done extraordinarily well by it. Jennifer Higdon’s opera adaptation (with libretto by Gene Scheer) debuted at Santa Fe Opera in 2015. As it interweaves their stories, Cold Mountain asserts itself as an authentic odyssey, hugely powerful, majestically lovely, and keenly moving.Īnthony Minghella’s 2003 film adaptation received seven Academy Award Nominations including Best Actor (Jude Law) and Best Supporting Actress (Reneé Zellweger). At the same time, the intrepid Ada is trying to revive her father’s derelict farm and learning to survive in a world where the old certainties have been swept away. His trek across the disintegrating South brings him into intimate and sometimes lethal converse with bounty hunters and witches, slaves and marauders. Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, a Confederate soldier named Inman decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge mountains to Ada, the woman he loves. Originally published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 1997, Charles Frazier’s debut novel made publishing history when it sailed to the top of The New York Times best-seller list for sixty-one weeks, won numerous literary awards, including the National Book Award, and went on to sell over three million copiesĬold Mountain, the extraordinary story of a soldier’s perilous journey back to his beloved at the end of the Civil War, is at once an enthralling adventure, a stirring love story, and a luminous evocation of a vanished land, a place where savagery coexists with splendor and human beings contend with the inhuman solitude of the wilderness.
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