Tyler's review
Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier
A girl in one of my English classes last semester said of this book, "I always get sucked into that Appalachian shit." Frazier romanticizes the lifestyle and landscape of pre-urbanization America better than many writers, making it pretty easy to get 'sucked into that shit.'
However, I think he captured the fertile wonder of the natural world and its rhythms in his first novel, the well-known 'Cold Mountain,' than he does here. When he's at his best, his images of man living in nature can remind the reader of the eloquent backwoods monologues in the films of Terrence Malick.
'Thirteen Moons' starts off strong, promising to be as potent a meditation on love and mankind's encroachment on the noble wilderness as 'Cold Mountain' was. But about 3/4 of the way in, Frazier seems to run of steam. The narrator's various episodes of the final portion of the book aren't nearly as memorable as the sense of discovery and first romance in the beginning half. An argument could be ma...more
However, I think he captured the fertile wonder of the natural world and its rhythms in his first novel, the well-known 'Cold Mountain,' than he does here. When he's at his best, his images of man living in nature can remind the reader of the eloquent backwoods monologues in the films of Terrence Malick.
'Thirteen Moons' starts off strong, promising to be as potent a meditation on love and mankind's encroachment on the noble wilderness as 'Cold Mountain' was. But about 3/4 of the way in, Frazier seems to run of steam. The narrator's various episodes of the final portion of the book aren't nearly as memorable as the sense of discovery and first romance in the beginning half. An argument could be ma...more
