Terry's Reviews > Cold Mountain

This is a book about the journey through the Blue Ridge mountains of a wounded young man (Inman) walking away from the Civil War, back to a woman whom he barely knew. While still at the army hospital, Inman is described: "His spirit, he feared, had been blasted away so that he had become lonesome and estranged from all around him as a sad old heron standing pointless watch in the mudflats of a pond lacking frogs."

As he thinks about the trek home, "Inman did not consider himself to be a superstitious person, but he did believe that there is a world invisible to us. He no longer thought of that world as heaven, nor did he still think that we get to go there when we die. Those teachings had been burned away. But he could not abide by a universe composed only of what he could see, especially when it was so frequently foul. So he held to the idea that another world, a better place, and he figured he might as well consider Cold Mountain to be the location of it as anywhere."

It is also the story of that young woman (Ada), raised to privilege with few skills, learning how to survive on her farm after her father's death and the disintegration of her known world which was swept away with the war. "Ada wished never to leave this fine shelter, for when she considered the pass she had recently reached, she wondered how a human being could be raised more impractically for the demands of an exposed life." Ada is frightened, alone, and about to starve. "It was easy enough to say...that the path to contentment was to abide by one's own nature and follow its path. Such she believed was clearly true. But if one had not the slightest hint toward finding what one's own nature was, then even stepping out on the path became a snaggy matter."

Enter Ruby, motherless like Ada, willing to help Ada, with no formal schooling, but full of practical knowledge. "...Ada thought she saw in her a spark as bright and hard as one struck with steel and flint." Ruby is both teacher and companion. She is, above all, a survivor.

I thought this book was outstanding and yes, better than the movie. I found myself filling my paperback book with post-it notes (because I hate to underline, write in book margins or fold down corners) for quotes I found interesting or moving in some way or another.

Sometimes, it was just a turn of phrase that struck me: "At the first gesture of dawn, Ruby was up and out...."

Other times it was big ideas, such as on the subject of war: "Men talked of war as if they committed it to preserve what they had and what they believed. But Inman now guessed it was boredom with the repetition of the daily rounds that made them take up weapons. The endless arc of the sun, the wheel of seasons. War took a man out of that circle of regular life and made a season of its own, not much dependent on anything else. He had not been immune to its pull. But sooner or later you get awful tired and just plain sick of watching people killing one another for every kind of reason at all, using whatever implements fall to hand. So that morning, he looked at the berries and the birds and had felt cheered by them, happy they had waited for him to come to his senses, even though he feared himself deeply at variance with such elements of the harmonious."

On the subject of local music: "Ruby said that there were many songs that you could not say anybody in particular made by himself. A song went around from fiddler to fiddler and each one added something and took something away so that in time the song became a different thing from what it had been, barely recognizable in either tune or lyric."

Inman is a tragic hero. "There was fact in what the dark voice said. You could become so lost in bitterness and anger that you could not find your way back. No map or guidebook for such journey." He gets lost in the world, which is symbolic of being lost in his soul. "He had lost confidence in his sense of direction, since during the past months he had been lost in every kind of place where parallel fences did not hem him in from going wrong." Inman knows that it is pointless to grieve for your losses -- "loss of time and for the damage done therein. For the dead and for your own lost self. ...for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you were."

Ada, on the other hand, adapts and learns, as Ruby teaches her how to survive. "What she thought was that cures of all sorts exist in the natural world. Its every nook and cranny apparently filled with physic and restorative to bind up rents from the outside. Even the most hidden root or web served some use. And there was spirit rising from within to knit sturdy scar over the backsides of wounds. Either way, though, you had to work at it, and they'd both fail you if you doubted them too much. She had gathered that from Ruby, at least." Ruby is the teacher that shows Ada how to live and to be strong. "And then she (Ada) thought that you went on living one day after another, and in time you were somebody else, your previous self only like a close relative, a sister or brother, with whom you shared a past. But a different person, a separate life." And she is happy with the new person she had become.

This journey to Cold Mountain was fascinating, sometimes spell-binding and heart-strung. At 449 pages, it is not a quick read, but one which will stay with you long after finishing. If you have not seen the movie, read the book first. If you;'ve already seen the movie, you might picture Inman as Jude Law, Ada as Nicole Kidman and Ruby as Renee Zellweger -- which is okay. The portrayal of Ruby by Zellweger was particularly good.