Day: February 11, 2008

The few positives of this book are that James Fenimore Cooper does his best to create a narrative of frontier life with themes of racism and friendship. I also did not dislike any of the characters, but the only ones I truly like die. This was not my original choice for Decades 1820’s, and I must say that particular decade does not have any many enticing classic books. This novel was boring. I blame Cooper’s prose which is a bit wordy, but not as crazy as Dickens. At least Dickens seems to take fun in verbosity, but Cooper seems to take himself too seriously. He has footnotes about historical facts, and at times, it could very dry in the academic sense. The character dialogue was better than the descriptions, but even though, I found myself constantly drifting. I am not one to turn my nose up at lengthy prose as I like Tolstoy, Garcia Marquez, Steinbeck and others who write epic novels. Also, books published around the same time are just more enjoyable reads. Frankenstein was a lot more interesting.

The 1992 movie is not like the book, and apparently based on another movie version. There are many differences between he book and the 92 movie which I saw a years ago. The film is okay, and the best part being Daniel Day Lew

While I did not hate this book and there were some decent moments of writing, it was mostly mundane.