The Cove [Hardcover]

The Cove is set during the First World War in a remote American backwater.
The story revolves around brother and sister, Hank and Laurel, who live together on their family farm in 'The Cove'. The locals believe The Cove to be cursed and Laurel to be cursed because she has a birthmark on her neck and face. Her brother, Hank, is a disabled war hero who works hard to improve their farm and to prove his worth to his future father-in-law.
The unexpected arrival of a stranger brings a glimmer of hope into Laurel's lonely life, but ultimately changes the course of their lives.
This is a captivating novel and love story, while exposing the small minded prejudices of a superstitious community. The writing style is descriptive and more sedate than Ron Rash's previous novel, Serena. I enjoyed this book more than Serena, but the underlying sense of misery that Rash conveys leads to an ending that's not easy to predict, but the reader knows it's going to be tragic.

This novel is set on a small, isolated farm located in "the Cove" in North Carolina. The land is overshadowed by the cliffs surrounding the cove and, as a result, it is in almost perpetual shade. It is a gloomy place, where even trees fail to thrive. Residents of the nearby town believe it is unlucky and avoid it. The farm is occupied by Hank and Laurel who are brother and sister. Their parents are both dead and they scrape a living from the farm. Laurel is shunned by superstitious locals and considered a witch simply because she has a birthmark. Laurel feels isolated and lonely and longs to escape.

Into this dark and lonely place appears Walter. But just who is Walter? This is the question which is at the heart of the novel.

The novel takes place towards the end of the first world war. Many of the local men have died in the war or have returned home injured. There is a great deal of hysteria about the war and German spies are imagined everywhere. A professor of languages at the local college is attacked simply because he speaks German! Suspicion even falls upon a librarian because the library stocks books which have references to Germany.

This novel is beautifully written. It is hugely atmospheric and evokes a particular time and place in a masterly fashion. We know from the start that a tragedy will occur - we don't know what, we don't know when, but we can sense it. The sense of foreboding is palpable and I found myself reading the novel with a knot in my stomach, so strongly did I feel the sense of imminent tragedy.

The novel is character driven and events unfold directly from the characters involved, which makes events all too believable. Although I stated above that the novel evokes a particular time in American history, in other ways the novel has a timeless quality. It shows that unfortunately mankind does not change or learn from its mistakes. These will be repeated again and again.

This is altogether a marvellous novel but one which was difficult to read at times because of the darkness at its heart. It is a novel which is thought provoking and will remain with me for a very long time. I strongly recommend it.

This short novel, which has more real content and lasting power to move the reader than many much longer works, has introduced me to Ron Rash whose writing I shall make a point of seeking out in the future.

The prologue - a device which I normally find superfluous - holds many of the keys to his power as a writer: the clear, economical, unassuming prose; the ability to create a sense of place and people; a suggestion of mystery or menace to hook your interest. There is the rural wilderness of some Tennessee backwater, the isolation and superstition of the local people, who have hung protective charms at the entrance to the dark cove into which the sun never shines, where bad luck strikes the inhabitants, the one spot where locals are happy to see a Government official survey prior to flooding it for a future TVA reservoir.

Ron Rash has already begun to hook me with the yarn of this outsider unravelling some tragedy from the past, when he shifts back in the main body of the story to the life of Laurie Stanton, doomed to grow up in the cove after her father's unwise purchase of cheap land where the chestnut woods prove diseased. Shunned by the nearby townsfolk because of an unsightly birth mark, even regarded by some as a witch, this sensitive, bookish girl gives up any thought of education and escape to run the domestic side of the small farm. Her brother Hank, returned wounded with a lost hand from the First World War in distance Europe, is bent on doing up the farm prior to his marriage. He is only too glad to use the services of Walter, the young camper whom Laurie finds lying sick in the woods, after being drawn by his skilful flute-playing. Walter's inability either to speak or to read and write do not prevent his becoming a companion to this lonely young woman.

And so the framework is set up for a tightly plotted, often moving yarn with some moments of high tension. All the threads are brought together for the dramatic climax, which leaves you guessing over some major points to the last page, and even after that with a good deal to reflect on about say, the nature of loss and of life, in which intense personal relationships may be of great value, whilst they are also in the scale of things - the dark, massive cliff of the cove - of no significance at all.

The story is an interesting take on how the lives of ordinary people can be affected by a war on the other side of the world. Rash is good on what sounds like the authentic period detail, including life on a fairly primitive farm. He is very convincing in getting inside the head of a young woman, and his main characters are mostly well-developed with strong, realistic and varying emotions. Perhaps Walter's thoughts remain unclear and some of the minor players tend towards stereotypes, but overall this is a gripping story which succeeds both as popular and literary fiction.