The Cove: A Novel

by Ron Rash

Overview

“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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061804205
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/06/2012
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 7.84(h) x 0.68(d)

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.

Editorial Reviews

[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

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

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

In Rash’s skilled hands, even farm chores take on a meditative beauty.

People

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

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

I wish the whole world spoke the way Ron Rash’s characters do. Read him for his poetry and great humanity. Just read him.” %COMM_CONTRIB%Jennifer Haigh

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)

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 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

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

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

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)

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

[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 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

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

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

"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."

/ Like Fire (blog) - Open Letters Monthly

"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

"In Rash’s skilled hands, even farm chores take on a meditative beauty."

People Magazine

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