Around the World in 80 Books discussion

Start discussion here for Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier.


About the Book (from ReadingGroupGuides)

The Civil War is wearily entering its last, grisly year. Inman, a veteran of the Petersburg and Fredericksburg campaigns, recovering from his wounds in a Confederate hospital, decides he has had enough of the pointless slaughter and walks out, heading across the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina toward Cold Mountain, where he hopes to reclaim his spiritual homeland and Ada, the woman he loves. It is to be an unforgettable odyssey through the soon-to-be-defeated South, with Inman pursued by relentless Home Guard troops whose task it is to hunt out deserters. Interwoven with Inman's heart-stopping adventures is the story of Ada's own internal journey. A genteel intellectual, Ada has been sheltered by her clergyman father from the hard necessities of life. Now, orphaned and impoverished, she must confront the physical world for the first time as she struggles to make her rundown farm self-sufficient. With the help of Ruby, a tough, brave young woman, she comes to terms with the forces of nature and, in the process, with her own soul. As Ada and Inman's lives, long-separated, begin finally to converge, they discover unsuspected truths about themselves and each other, and about the new world that is being born from the ruins of the old.

Charles Frazier writes about his native territory with the eye of a lifelong countryman and the voice of a poet. Cold Mountain is a saga of discovery, terror, and knowledge that is epic in its passion and mythic in scope.


Discussion Questions

1. How would you describe the style, or the voice, in which Charles Frazier tells his story? Do you find it realistic or stylized? What does it add to the overall effect of the story?

2. Charles Frazier seems to imply that, because of the moral barrenness of the Civil War and the crimes committed on the battlefield in the name of honor, there is no moral onus attached to the act of desertion? Do you agree with him? Why has Frazier chosen to portray the deserters as good, the Home Guard as evil?

3. How have Inman's views on secession, slavery, and war changed by the time he finds himself in the military hospital? What has he come to believe of both sides, the Federals and the Confederates, their leaders, and their motivations for fighting? Is he being overly cynical? How does the fighting and the level of blind violence in the Civil War compare with other, more recent wars?

4. Inman remembers a conversation he had with a boy he met after the battle of Fredericksburg, when he pointed out Orion's principal star. The boy replied, "That's just a name we give it. . . . It ain't God's name." We can never know God's name for things, the boy continues; "It's a lesson that sometimes we're meant to settle for ignorance" [p. 117]. How does this statement correspond with the lessons learned by Ada and Ruby? What point does Cold Mountain make about the nature and limitations of human knowledge?

5. Inman has little use for conventional religion, but he liked one sermon of Monroe's: "That which shows God in me, fortifies me. That which shows God out of me, makes me a wart and a wen. There is no longer a necessary reason for my being. Already the long shadows of untimely oblivion creep over me, and I shall decrease forever" [p. 77]. What notion of "God" does this quotation endorse? What about the voice that spoke to Ruby when, as a child, she was in despair: Was this God's voice, and if so, in what does God consist? What do you conclude Frazier's ideas to be, and how do they differ from conventional Christianity?

6. How, finally, does Frazier portray the natural world: as benign, treacherous, cruel, or indifferent? Famous contemporaries of Inman and Ada--thinkers like Darwin, Wordsworth, and Emerson--were expressing new ideas, in poetry and prose, about nature. How do these ideas influence Monroe's thinking? "Monroe had commented that, like all elements of nature, the features of this magnificent topography were simply tokens of some other world, some deeper life with a whole other existence toward which we ought aim all our yearning" [p. 144]. What very different conclusions does Ada come to? How do Inman and Ruby view the natural world?

7. Remembering his friend Swimmer, Inman reflects that Swimmer's spells "portrayed the spirit as a frail thing, constantly under attack and in need of strength, always threatening to die inside you. Inman found this notion dismal indeed, since he had been taught by sermon and hymn to hold as truth that the soul of man never dies" [p. 20]. Which version of the soul seems to be borne out during the course of the book? Does Inman come to change his ideas during his journey?

8. Throughout Cold Mountain, the author works with the idea of the search for the soul. Inman, Ada, Ruby, Stobrod, Veasey, and the slaveholder's runaway son Odell are all in some way engaged upon this search. Which of them is, in the end, successful, and why?

9. Both Ada and Inman reflect, at different times, that they are living in a "new world" [p. 33]. . . . What changes is nineteenth-century America undergoing, and how do Ada and Inman's experiences, and the people they meet, reflect those changes? How, and why, is the ideal of womanhood changing?

10. Both Ada and Ruby were motherless children from the time they were born. How has that state affected their characters and formed their ideas? How has it molded their relationships with their fathers? Do both women reconcile themselves to their fathers in the end, and if so, why?

11. Was Monroe, overall, a good father to Ada? In what ways did he fail her, and in what ways did he contribute to her strength of character? In what ways did he deceive himself?

12. Several of Cold Mountain's characters meet their death during the course of the novel. How do these characters' deaths reflect, or redeem, their lives? What points are made by the particular deaths of Veasey, Ada's suitor Blount, Pangle, Monroe, and others?

13. Stobrod claims not to be Ruby's true father; his wife, he says, was impregnated by a heron. What other mythical or animistic images does the book offer, and what is their purpose? How does Frazier view, and treat, the supernatural?

14. What is the significance of the Cherokee woman's story about the Shining Rocks? What does it mean to Inman, and why is Ada skeptical? What does her reaction tell us about her character?

I liked the quirky writing style of this book. The main character, Inman, doesn't say much, but we end up feeling like we're seeing the action of the book through his eyes. It's a neat trick on Frazier's part.

I read Cold Mountain a few years ago and I really enjoyed it. It's one of the best novels set during the civil war I've read so far.

Ellinor wrote: "I read Cold Mountain a few years ago and I really enjoyed it. It's one of the best novels set during the civil war I've read so far."

What did you like about it?

I read this book several years ago and really enjoyed it. I read it while being bedridden after having surgery. I watched the DVD on the same day that I finished the book, so that, coupled with some good painkillers, may blur the lines between the book and the movie. I do remember liking the book more than the movie.

It is a fascinating story about two people who meet before the Civil War and the events that occur to each of them and how much they each change before they are reunited. Much of the book follows Inman's Odyssey-like journey back to Ada. I think the author did a great job with his both his descriptions of the hardships of war and the beauty of the Appalachian landscape.

I read this book last year and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I thought that the perspectives of the soldier returning home and the woman who has been left to run things at home while the war was going on to be both unique and interesting.

I believe that Frazier is a very good writer, too. I would recommend Nightwoods if you enjoyed Cold Mountain. A very different story, but well done nonetheless.

I found the whole story very fascinating. I really enjoyed the different perspectives it was told from and that it was written very suspenseful. I really felt with the characters.
I don't remember much about the language because I read it too long ago for that. But as I liked the whole I think I liked the language as well :)

I enjoyed getting inside the characters' heads, and Inman's harrowing journey back to Ada was really intense, but it's the love story that has stayed with me.

Inman seemed to feel the world had taken control of his life, and he was trying to get back as much as the world would allow. He seemed to feel bitterness about what had happened to him, but he was also trying to make his peace with what he couldn't change.

You could say his ambitions were small--a certain woman, and a second chance at life--or you could say that the little he asked for was really everything that matters.

Did not get pulled into the book when I tried reading it but loved the movie that came from the book - fantastic soundtrack! I actually just picked up copy of the book at a second-hand store and plan to give it another go.

I read the book about a year ago, and it took me a few chapters to get really into the book, but then I was hooked. Cold Mountain was based on family stories passed down through the years to the author. The book has a marvelous sense of place and time, and I felt transported to North Carolina at the end of the Civil War. I liked Charles Frazier's spare prose and engaging characters.

As the book alternates between Inman's journey and Ada's struggles on the farm, it shows them both maturing. Their belief in their love keeps them going until they can be together again. The country has undergone a huge change during the Civil War, and they must carve out a place for themselves in the new South.

This story spoke of things far more profoundly than I had anticipated it would. Yes, it is a story of love, but it is also so much more.
The principal characters draw us with them on a journey; Inman's physical journey homeward to Cold Mountain we can follow only from a distance, but in their spiritual journey towards self-knowledge, we can choose to accompany them more closely.
Frazier's lyrical and poetic narrative really engaged my imagination, bringing to life with great clarity the beauty and harshness of the landscape and the selfless kindness, the desperation and grief or the ugly and heartless brutality of those who inhabit it. We learn how nature, unlike man, is flawless in its reasoning and are enlightened to the many glorious wonders of a nature unhindered by those who understand the responsibilities of guardianship rather than attempting its dominion.
With a gift for atmospheric prose, the author encourages us to view Cold Mountain as more than just a place, it is an idea - the idea of a better world amid the chaos; but can that world survive in the face of changes fashioned from the scars of war?
This was a moving and emotional read, the odyssey concluding with the unavoidable dark truth that to live is also to die, for this has always been so.

Ana, you raise an interesting point: to live is also to die. So much of Cold Mountain is infused with the sense that security, if not a complete illusion, is only temporary. Today we're much more complacent and expect guarantees of stability. When it fails us, we're surprised. If not outraged.

Being from NC, I really loved the imagery Frazier presented on each page - I truly felt like I was making my way through the seasons with Inman while reading. Though at first I thought the ending was utterly unfair, it really does embody what happened to so many during that time, fighting relentlessly for what you want and getting so close just not close enough. After finishing the book, I watched the movie right away - I wasn´t disappointed!

One of the quotes that will stay with me: ¨...all that moves must shape itself to the maze of actual landscape, no matter what its preferences might be.¨

Anyone else have a favorite quote?

I think I was in the minority on this because I have now twice picked up the book and tried to read it, but was bored early on and didn't get further than 50 pages in. The laid-back writing style felt tedious to me, although it did work for the story. I do remember liking the movie ok, though.

Cold Mountain

Ada accompanied her father when he moved from Charleston, SC to Cold Mountain in NC due to health problems. Her father hired people to run their farm and Ada spent all of her time in pursuit of the finer arts. After church one Sunday, Inman got himself introduced to Ada. He was attracted to her, but she was lukewarm. They saw each other only a couple of times before Inman set off to fight in the war.

Not long afterwards, Ada's father passed away, and Ada inherited the farm. But she had been insulated from the labors of running it and knew absolutely nothing about how to take over. One day, Ruby shows up, saying that the neighbor told her Ada needed help. Ruby had been abandoned as a young child and has had to fend for herself since. She says that she can help Ada get the farm back up & running, but she refuses to be hired help. So, they agree that the two of them will be partners. Under Ruby's direction, they set to it.

There are two stories running throughout the book. One is about Ada & Ruby running the farm, the other is about Inman and his quest to get back to Ada after deserting the army, still suffering from a major unhealed head wound. We jump back & forth between them in parallel until they finally merge in the end.

Charles Fazier exquisitely describes Cold Mountain and it's surroundings. He equally well describes Inman's journey through the wilds and the mountains as he makes his way from Petersburg, VA back to Cold Mountain. One can almost hear, smell, experience the environs. What beautiful country! Alas, it seems that at least half of the book is descriptions of the environment. Even though Frazier is a master at it, I still grew tired of it and started skipping over those parts.

I was really into the story at the beginning, but by the end, I really didn't much care anymore. It pains me to say that, given Charles Frazier's talent.

Group read February 2013
I read September 2016
My rating: 2-stars
Region: USA/NC & VA