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The Cove: A Novel Hardcover – April 10, 2012
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“Set during World War One, The Cove is a novel that speaks intimately to today’s politics. Beautifully written, tough, raw, uncompromising, entirely new. Ron Rash is a writer’s writer who writes for others.”
—Colum McCann
“Ron Rash is a writer of both the darkly beautiful and the sadly true; The Cove solidifies his reputation as one of our very finest novelists.”
—Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls
Here is a magnificent tale that captures the wondrous beauty of nature and love—and the darkness of superstition and fear—from one of America’s most exciting contemporary novelists. With The Cove, Ron Rash, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Serena, returns to the Appalachian milieu he has previously so memorably evoked. A two-time O. Henry Prize winner for his short fiction—and recipient of the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Story Award and the 2010 SIBA Book Award for his story collection Burning Bright—Rash can expect more honors for The Cove, a novel that brilliantly explores often dangerous notions of patriotism during wartime. This story of a love affair doomed in the rising turmoil of WWI resonates powerfully in today’s world.
- Print length272 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherEcco
- Publication dateApril 10, 2012
- Dimensions6 x 0.93 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100061804193
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
In the lyrical prose that won him such acclaim with Serena, Ron Rash washes this novel's languid spaces with bucketfuls of atmospheric dread, pushing his characters into the currents of their fate with determined empathy. Murky and deliberate, The Cove solidifies Rash as master of modern Southern Gothic. --Jon Foro
Review
“A gently beautiful new novel…Rash, a native of Appalachia, has written a southern tragedy, with a self-consciously Shakespearean structure and economy…. [A] powerful novel, with some of the mysterious moral weight of Carson McCullers, along with a musical voice that belongs to Rash alone.” — USA Today
“This book ranks among the best backwoods fiction since 2006’s Winter’s Bone.... [A] gripping novel…[not] just an elegant work of literary fiction, written in a voice that’s hauntingly simple and Southern; it’s also a riveting mystery.” — Entertainment Weekly, Grade: A
“Rash is particularly good at capturing the hazy space where otherworldly phantoms mingle with plain old human meanness…Rash never lays down a dull or clunky line…at the very end…these pages ignite, and suddenly we’re racing through a conflagration of violence that no one seems able to control except Rash.” — Washington Post
“In Rash’s skilled hands, even farm chores take on a meditative beauty.” — People
“Mr. Rash’s writing is so richly atmospheric…[he] can make words take wing…. A breathless sequence of events lead the book to its devastating final sentence. And that sentence affirms Mr. Rash’s reputation for writerly miracles.” — Janet Maslin, New York Times
“[B]eautifully crafted…In [the cove’s] story, we hear the unique voice of a region made all the more poignant for how few will ever hear it exactly this way again.” — Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Rash masterfully poises suspense elements and gives full reign to other strengths: language, awe, symbolism, cast of characters and mountain knowledge…. It’s a book you could read again to savor the writing. Rash has found a subject that compellingly represents his vision―beauty shadowed by foreboding; and he’s made it symphonic.” — Asheville Citizen-Times
“Lonely young woman meets mysterious stranger. What might have been trite and formulaic is anything but in Rash’s fifth novel, a dark tale of Appalachian superstition and jingoism so good it gives you chills… Even better than the bestselling Serena (2008), for here Rash has elevated melodrama to tragedy.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Rash effortlessly summons the rugged Appalachian landscape as well as the small-mindedness and xenophobia of a country in the grip of patriotic fervor, drawing striking parallels to the heated political rhetoric of today. A powerful novel that skillfully overlays its tragic love story with pointed social commentary.” — Booklist (starred review)
“The gripping plot, gothic atmosphere, and striking descriptions, in particular of the dismal cove, make this a top-notch story of an unusual place and its fated and fearful denizens.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review), Pick of the Week
“Rash develops his story masterfully; the large cast of characters is superbly realized, as is the xenophobia that accompanies the war, and Rash brings the various narrative threads together at the conclusion of the novel with formidable strength and pathos.” — Library Journal (starred review)
“Set during World War One, The Cove is a novel that speaks intimately to today’s politics. Beautifully written, tough, raw, uncompromising, entirely new. Ron Rash is a writer’s writer who writes for others.” — Colum McCann
“Ron Rash uses language with such apparently effortless skill that it is as though he found words in his barn as a child and has been training them to fit his needs ever since....Rash throws a big shadow now and it’s only going to get bigger and soon.” — Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter's Bone
“I wish the whole world spoke the way Ron Rash’s characters do. Read him for his poetry and great humanity. Just read him.” — Jennifer Haigh, author of Faith
“Ron Rash is a writer of both the darkly beautiful and the sadly true; his new novel, The Cove, solidifies his reputation as one of our very finest novelists.” — Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls
“The Cove is a beautifully written book that uses heartfelt characters to describe the difficult life of a lonely, misunderstood young woman.” — The Desert News
“The Cove, the laconically beautiful new novel by Ron Rash, actually is lyrical, in the dictionary sense of having to do with song or poetry. Rash’s gorgeous prose is as close to song as you’ll find without an accompanying score . . .” — New Orleans Times-Picayune
“Ron Rash has a deft touch in describing both landscape and household, and his use of evocatively specific regionalisms never edges into condescension or vernacular.” — Open Letters Monthly / Like Fire (blog)
“Ron Rash always satisfies. . . His newest novel, , reinforces this assessment. Rash still knows how to delivers a terrifically searing blow.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer
From the Back Cover
The New York Times bestselling author of Serena returns to Appalachia, this time at the height of World War I, with the story of a blazing but doomed love affair caught in the turmoil of a nation at war
Deep in the rugged Appalachians of North Carolina lies the cove, a dark, forbidding place where spirits and fetches wander, and even the light fears to travel. Or so the townsfolk of Mars Hill believe–just as they know that Laurel Shelton, the lonely young woman who lives within its shadows, is a witch. Alone except for her brother, Hank, newly returned from the trenches of France, she aches for her life to begin.
Then it happens–a stranger appears, carrying nothing but a beautiful silver flute and a note explaining that his name is Walter, he is mute, and is bound for New York. Laurel finds him in the woods, nearly stung to death by yellow jackets, and nurses him back to health. As the days pass, Walter slips easily into life in the cove and into Laurel's heart, bringing her the only real happiness she has ever known.
But Walter harbors a secret that could destroy everything–and danger is closer than they know. Though the war in Europe is near its end, patriotic fervor flourishes thanks to the likes of Chauncey Feith, an ambitious young army recruiter who stokes fear and outrage throughout the county. In a time of uncertainty, when fear and ignorance reign, Laurel and Walter will discover that love may not be enough to protect them.
This lyrical, heart-rending tale, as mesmerizing as its award-winning predecessor Serena, shows once again this masterful novelist at the height of his powers.
About the Author
Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestseller Serena and Above the Waterfall, in addition to four prizewinning novels, including The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; four collections of poems; and six collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University.
Product details
- Publisher : Ecco; First Edition (April 10, 2012)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 272 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0061804193
- Item Weight : 1.01 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.93 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,167,738 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,242 in Southern Fiction
- #6,016 in Small Town & Rural Fiction (Books)
- #15,350 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Finalist and New York Times bestselling novel, Serena, in addition to three other prizewinning novels, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; three collections of poems; and four collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and Chrmistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice the recipient of the O.Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University.
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Before proceeding further, I would like to give you a sample of Rash's unique prose style (from pages 103 and 104): A misty drizzle fell all morning. Fog tendriled out of the woods, slow wisps merging and unfurling across the cove floor. As the day wore on, the fog thickened. The hammer's steady taps sounded farther and farther away. When Laurel walked to the springhouse to get milk, Hank and Walter were immersed in the whiteness... After Laurel toweled herself dry, she got the blue-and-white gingham dress from the closet, its broad shoulders widened to help conceal the purple stain... With the birth stain covered, she could almost believe someone might find her pretty.
Forced to leave school because of the birthmark, Laurel was given books by her caring teacher, Miss Calicut, whom she visits often, but only in memory of those kindnesses.
One day she hears a flute near where once she saw her beloved Carolina parakeets, now extinct she believes. She was washing clothes in the river. And thus Walter is introduced, a man who does not speak. And in a very unique way, Ron Rash is able to expose much about him through the questions both Laurel and Hank ask him. He is a wanted man. I won't say more.
And against this is the backdrop of what is really early McCarthyism. Chauncey, a banker's son, wears the military uniform but has not been to war. Through political maneuvering he has been assigned the recruiter, and he has done very well, sending off to war many young men, some killed, others wounded in truly horrific ways. And there is a witch hunt on--headed by Chauncey--to rid the local college of its German-born professor and any who might be sympathetic to the "Hun" cause.
And that is where I will leave it. This book is one of the best I have read in recent years--and I'm an avid reader.
The books is told from the POVs of Laurel, so earnest and sadly pathetic in her loneliness; Walter, so scared but so good and resolute underneath; and rich-boy Army recruiter Chauncey, so scared but so bad and irresolute underneath.
Through much of the book I was pretty down on The Cove. It lacks the poetry of One Foot in Eden. Chauncey is a pretty sad-sack villain. A terrible person? Sure. But terribly uninteresting. That all (well, mostly) changed when I read the ending. It was an inevitable climax (Rash made that clear from scene one, set well ahead of the events of the book). But Rash navigates it without either running aground the shoals of triteness and dullness or inexplicability. Chauncey gets a lot more interesting. And it hits just the right note of cruel irony so fitting in a story of backwoods Appalachia.
Top reviews from other countries
Laurel Shelton, le nom de cette femme est une allusion au massacre de Shelton Laurel qui a eu lieu en janvier 1863 où des confédérés ont massacré des villageois pas loin de la ville de Mars Hill où a lieu l'action de ce roman. Cet incident est évoqué dans "Cold Mountain" de Charles Frazier et dans un autre roman de Ron Rash "The World Made Straight". Dans "The Cove" la guerre qui est en arrière-plan, mais qui joue un rôle primordial, n'est pas entre le Nord et le Sud mais mondiale car nous sommes en 1918.
Laurel and her brother Hank live there alone, their parents having died and now lying in mossy graves nearby. The local people don't venture there if they can help it, and they are convinced that Laurel is a witch due to a large red birthmark she has. Hank is due to marry and break up the sibling solitude. And then their hard and simple lives are changed forever by the appearance of a stranger who plays beautiful music on his flute by the banks of the waters. He lets them believe that he cannot speak, but is really hiding a secret, and hiding from others.
Rash skilfully sets up the outcome as a tragic one in the short prologue, but it is not clear exactly to whom the tragedy will befall until the last pages, adding to the tension as the novel reaches its thrilling climax. The parallel narrative of a local army recruiting officer, who is trying to prove his worth without going into action, is skilfully interwoven.
As I was reading the book I was imagining Jennifer Lawrence in the film version as the heroine Laurel, and then I learned that she is about to star in an adaption of another one of his books, `Serena', so I was on the right lines. Rash describes the world of Laurel and Hank in the cold lonely cove in brilliant and transfixing detail. He transports his reader to the poverty of the Appalachian folk in a mesmerising way. And I am certain the film rights to this novel too will be hot property.
I didn't want this story to end, and will certainly be reading more of Rash's work. If I read a more beautiful and memorable novel this year it will surely be one to shout about.
J aimerais bien pénétrer dans ce vallon encaissé et découvrir tous ces endroits .Hélas , le barrage se construira et adieu le site enchanteur!