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Feb 01, 2012

karen rated it:

THIS IS NOT A FLOAT, KOWALSKI! THIS IS AN ALL-NEW 2012 REVIEW!!

i am alarmed that i only wrote a four-line review of this amazing book. now that i am starting to read the cove, i figure now is as good a time as any to remind this website just how good ron rash is, and how so far, serena is the best of them. (i am only on page 15 of the cove, so this could change)

whenever i try to hand-sell this at work, i will usually just say: "it is like macbeth in a logging communi More...

20 comments like (55 people liked it)

Oct 14, 2009

Tara rated it:

I can sum this book up in two words. Boring and preposterous. First of all, you got this newly married couple, Pemberton and Serena running a logging camp in 1930s North Carolina. While Serena wows every man she comes across and gets her way in all things, Pemberton runs around and kills anyone that gets in his or his wife's way. In between their bouts of evilness, they going hunting, they have sex, they attend a meeting, go hunting again, and then have more sex. (There is more hunting than More...

20 comments like (10 people liked it)

Aug 02, 2011

Jeanette rated it:

I read the first 90 pages of this book and couldn't continue. The writing is excellent, quite impressive, really. But when each chapter brought a new form of cruelty to animals, I had to stop.
Bashing in a raccoon's skull with an axe...Starving a captive eagle to bend it to your will...Baiting a field with corn and apples so you can shoot twelve deer and a bear for sport, then just leave them all piled in the middle of the field to rot after you've killed them...Are you sickened yet? I fo More...

8 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jul 18, 2011

Will rated it:

In the primeval woods of North Carolina, young timber baron, George Pemberton, brings his bride, Serena, to live with him in his kingdom. He had been busy enough already, fathering a child with a local girl and clear-cutting wide swaths of land. Serena quickly establishes herself as a power in her own right, knowledgeable about the timber business from her family background in Colorado, frightened of nothing and totally, totally ruthless. She is both an almost deitific figure and a satanic one. More...

4 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jul 13, 2009

Elise rated it:

Just finished book for second time. It's a literary masterpiece. Ron Rash is not only a great southern writer, but one of the best contermpary writers. This time around I really caught the richness of the secondary characters and how their commentary and observations added to the narrative and the development of the three central characters. As a native North Carolinian, the beautiful description and protrayl of the mountain lndscape, culture and people warmed my heart. Go read this book!!

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 12, 2010

Nate rated it:

I am now officially a huge Ron Rash fan. This novel is starker and less whimsical than Cold Mountain, but the Southern landscape of years ago (in this case the 1930s) is captured just as elegantly, and reminds us of what a wilderness the NC mtns were at that time. This is a beautifully rendered tale of greed, murder, and revenge. The symbolism is understated and the supporting characters are fascinating. I loved it.

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 26, 2008

Corny rated it:

This a Greek tragedy complete with Greek Chorus, set in North Carolina during the Depression. The author is obviously very familiar with the area which now makes up the Great Smokies and tells his story against the background of the National Park Movement. His protagonist is an Electra-like Amazon whose ambition and ruthlessness seem limitless. No one escapes her wrath. In fact, she seemed so one dimensional that her actions were always predictable.
On the other hand, her husband, a much be More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 20, 2008

Lara rated it:

I would give this three & a half stars if I had that option. Sadly, I do not. I feel a bit shmuckish for not enjoying this book more than I did, and after some serious pondering I have come to the conclusion that I would probably have loved this book if I had a Y chromosome.

Seriously.

It's not that it isn't entertaining. I just couldn't really get myself to give two craps about any of the characters. And I couldn't suspend my disbelief enough to find any of it realisti More...

4 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine rated it:

In this beautifully written gothic novel, Rash paints an unforgettable portrait of a truly frightening woman, an "Ayn Rand [character] taken to sociopathic extremes" (Christian Science Monitor). Drawing comparisons to Lady Macbeth and Medea, critics were repulsed and fascinated by Serena. Though some felt that her wickedness, undiluted by the slightest pangs of compassion or empathy, crossed into the realm of caricature toward the end, they all agreed that it was impossible to put the

More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 13, 2008

Deborah rated it:

This book is a beautifully crafted tale of human awfulness; the minor characters' amusing foibles carry the story along while the two major characters do everything they can to derail it! Shocking, rather violent, but completely readable; strikes me as a bit of a "guy" book, which is great.

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Dec 13, 2008

Scott rated it:

Ron Rash is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. He has total control over the craft, and he's an absolute pleasure to read. This book, from beginning to end, didn't disappoint. Highly recommend.

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Dec 04, 2008

Naomi rated it:

This is quite a tale of an evil woman who stops at nothing to get what she wants.

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Mar 17, 2009

Aiken314 rated it:

I really would have given this book a 4.5. Five-star books should be almost life changing, and while SERENA didn't change my life, and while I felt the title character reminded me more of Steinbeck's Cathy Ames than Lady Macbeth, I enjoyed this book so much I would read it again--possibly use it for an English class, if it becomes available in paperback. I heard the author speak last fall and was immediately taken with his intelligence and talent, his research, and the locale of this novel - lu More...

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Dec 28, 2008

Margaret rated it:

This is a great new book by Ron Rash, who teaches at Western Carolina University. It is set in a lumber camp in the mountains of North Carolina during the Great Depression. The title character, Serena Pemberton, has just joined her husband at the camp as the book begins. Although most of the manager's wives stay away from the rough-and-tumble, backwoods camp, Serena quickly asserts her leadership.

The opening chapter reveals that Serena's husband has impregnated one of the local camp More...

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Dec 17, 2008

Kathleen rated it:

I found this book on one of the Times best-of-the-year recommendations and blazed through it (even though I left the library copy at O'Hare and had to buy the hardback which will now go back to the library to replace the book I lost.)

It has the aura of a morality play about the consequences of unchecked capitalism and its brute destruction of the environment and people. The novel is set in a logging camp at the beginning of the depression. Pemberton, the owner, has married Serena, More...

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Dec 01, 2008

Tripp rated it:

n first quarter or so of Ron Rash's Serena, I thought the book was over-hyped. Sure, the writing was good, and I thought the demonic Serena was fascinating, in the manner of a poisonous snake. These feelings fell away as I read late into the night and started anew Thanksgiving morning. I brought the book with me to my mother-in-law's, hoping I might steal away for some quiet reading time. No such luck, but just as well, as I would have distracted.

The book opens as Serena and her newl More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 05, 2011

Natalie rated it:

I decided to take this book on after meeting Ron Rash in early October during Shepherd University's Appalachian Heritage Festival. I traveled to Martinsburg High School with Rash and witnessed an amazing spectacle: high school students, excited about reading, full of questions, then making a line out the door to have a book signed. A real, honest to goodness book. And even more impressive, I witnessed Rash handling these questions. He went toe-to-toe with these kids for nearly two hours--and More...

2 comments like

Jul 26, 2011

Stuart added it

This was a good book, though not as good as I had expected from the reviews, and the placement in Amazon’s list of the top 10 of 2008. It tells the story of a very determined woman, the titular Serena, who marries a timber baron in the late 1920’s, early 1930’s, around the time of the Great Depression. She is even more determined that her husband that their company will log every forest they possibly can, initially in North Carolina, and subsequently, if she can fulfill her dream, in Brazil, wh More...

0 comments like

May 14, 2011

G rated it:

Ron Rash’s novel, Serena takes place in 1929 in western North Carolina. Serena is the beautiful orphaned daughter of a wealthy Colorado timber man and the new wife of George Pemberton, who hopes to make his fortune by stripping, as quickly as possible, 34,000 acres of trees in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, then moving on to the mahogany forests of Brazil.

We meet Serena for the first time when she and Pemberton – who are part of The Boston Lumber Company – arrive at a Nor More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 05, 2011

JoAnne rated it:

Not since Ben Ames Williams’ gripping novel, Leave It To Heaven, have we encountered a sinister female sociopath capable of chilling and frightening readers. But now there is Serena, the main character in Ron Rash's latest novel. In 1929, during the depression, newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton move to the Appalachians of North Carolina to build a logging empire. Serena, the Lady Macbeth of this stirring novel, proves herself to be the equal of any man in the camp. She is also without consci More...

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Jan 26, 2011

Paul rated it:

I have had this book in library for over 2 years. It was intention to read it when it was first published but I just never got to it. Shame on me for letting this book get away from me!!!!!

George Pemberton is the head of a huge and profitable logging empire in North Carolina. On a trip to Boston he falls in love with a lovely young lady by the name of Serena and they wed. Serena returns with George to help him run his logging operation and George discovers that she knows more abo More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 30, 2010

Liz rated it:

If you enjoy a plot that features more deaths than a Quentin Tarantino movie, then this book is for you. People drop like flies -- either through logging accidents or through the machinations of our somewhat larger than life heroine. (I don't consider that comment a spoiler as I thought the author did a pretty good job himself of spoiling what started as a promising plot).

The story is set in North Carolina in the depression years and is based on the marriage between two like-minded More...

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Jul 24, 2010

Gerri rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 22, 2010

Joshua rated it:

Stunning, simply stunning. Reading Serena is like watching a Hitchcock film, you have a sense of dread, you know somethings lurking just outside the camera vision, things break and tip, and your dread keeps building as Hitchcock plays with the filmatic devices at his disposal, prolonging the tension until the final nail comes down, bringing your emotions to a crescendo of relief and horror.

I'm not generally a fan of contemporary literature. I've always found them somewhat of a chore, More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 09, 2010

Gerry rated it:

Serena really divided my book group! I thought Rash's writing was engaging; he certainly knows the history of the timber slaughter and advent of the national parks system in the early 20th century (not as dry as it sounds; he weaves this history in with much color and detail--the best parts of the book, in my opinion). But Serena, the main character, becomes a caricature of evil. I longed to know what made her tick, but the reader gets few clues to what has shaped her into the cruel, grasping wo More...

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Jan 26, 2010

Jenny rated it:

As with Ron Rash's other writing, this book is poetic and beautiful even when the subject matter isn't (as is often the case here). Rash crafts a compelling villain in Serena and keeps the novel compulsively readable, even when all the actions the main characters commit are despicable. I was particularly impressed with his use point of view, which is a distant third. It seems anachronistic at first, but allows the author to be almost invisible, letting events play out without judgement. This More...

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Jan 03, 2010

Ashley rated it:

"What about you, Snipes?" Dunbar asked. "You think there to be mountain lions up here or is it just folks' imaginings?"

Snipes pondered the question a few moments before speaking.

"They's many a man of science would claim there aint because you got no irredeemable evidence like panther scat or fur or tooth or tail. In other words, some part of the animal in questions. Or better yet having the actual critter itself, the whole think kit and caboodle he More...

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Nov 25, 2009

Alice rated it:

Many words could be used to describe the appeal of Ron Rash’s Serena – gothic, dramatic, tragic, stark, fierce - but none can really encompass the sheer breadth and depth of this extraordinary novel. Serena can be compared to both a Greek tragedy and an Elizabethan drama.

The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton travel from Boston (where they met) to Waynesville in the North Carolina mountains where they plan to create a timber empire. Although George has already l More...

0 comments like

Oct 06, 2009

Kellyreaderofbooks rated it:

Set in 1920's North Carolina, the book starts with the wealthy timber baron Pemberton arriving back at the lumber camp with his new wife, Serena. Serena is very different from what the locals (poor but resilient mountain folk) are used to: she hunts and rides horse just like a man, knows as much about felling trees as the lumberjacks, and is a very savvy businesswoman. It soon becomes clear that Serena is running the show, with Pemberton taking the back seat.

Rachel Harmon is one of More...

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Aug 21, 2009

Arapahoe Library District rated it:

Not since Ben Ames Williams’ gripping novel, Leave It To Heaven, have we encountered a sinister female sociopath capable of chilling and frightening readers. But now there is Serena, the main character in Ron Rash's latest novel.

In 1929, during the depression, newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton move to the Appalachians of North Carolina to build a logging empire. Serena, the Lady Macbeth of this stirring novel, proves herself to be the equal of any man in the camp. She is also wi More...

0 comments like