Torch (Vintage Contemporaries)

I loved Tiny Beautiful Things from Cheryl Strayed and went on to read this book as well. I am grateful for this story of Cheryl's own resilience. So many of us who have difficult and heart breaking things happen in our own lives need to read stories like this one.

Very heart rendering account of a you girl whose mother dies unexpectedly at a time in the author's young adult life, when she really needs her mother. She has a very close relationship with her mother, and almost no relationship with her father who was abusive to her mother.

This was enjoyable to read. It is relevant and savy and kind and helpful. I highly recommend this book to friends and people of all ages. Some will love to relate to the experiences. Some will learn more about perspective to apply in their own situation or in taking a non-judgemental view of another persons circumstances.

This book is about death, dying and grief. It is not an upbeat book, so make sure you're in the mood for it. The writing is excellent and it is compelling, but I can't say I liked it. There isn't a lot happening, maybe emotionally there is, but let's just say there's no action or strong plot lines. I was relieved to finish it, even though it wasn't difficult to read. I like sad stories, but this was just grim.

I was disappointed to receive my book in damaged condition. The description of the book when ordering was not described as thus. I feel that I overpaid quite a bit. It is still readable but I would not have chosen a book in this shape for this price.

This is a well written and compelling book. However, if you have read "Wild" - you have already read this book. Same story, same theme, same Mother-Daughter and family conflicts. Sometimes the author's writing style gets on my nerves a bit. But all in all, read this book first (before "Wild") and it is enjoyable.

I bought this after LOVING the other one (name slips me right now, the hiking one). I feel that though this was fiction, we already know about the main character through Strayed's personal accounts of herself.

I selected this after reading her "Wild" book, which I loved. This book seemed like a repeat of Wild, but at a very slow pace. I just couldn't get into it. Actually stopped reading half way through and deleted off Kindle. Would still be willing to try other pieces she writes/wrote.

Maybe , I was expecting something different but after two chapters I knew that this was not for me. I was disappointed in the language and the book seemed disconnected to me from the beginning. I do not wish to read this book

If a review were only about the writing, Torch would deserve five stars. Strayed's first foray into novel writing is a stellar example of her skill with language. Where, for me, it stumbles is in the story line. A diagnosis of terminal cancer is shattering, but this family would be shattered no matter what. A drug-dealing son, an emotionally constipated sister, a stepfather who pretty well turns his back on them when their mother dies... There are a lot of chances for redemption here, but they keep spiraling down in a vortex of self-absorption. No one is particularly bad. No one is especially good. That makes them ordinary humans, and ordinary humans can learn from experience.

In Strayed's skilled hands, the emotional underlay of the book was enough to keep me going for the first half. But by then it was apparent there would not be much forward movement so the last half was a slog. I loved Strayed's Wild and her Sugar columns. Her next novel will, I predict, be a stunner, but this one isn't.

I, being a widow in recent years, found this book very disturbing and mostly unbelievable. 99.5% of the time I will read a book cover to cover but I stopped reading this half way through. How unlikely is it that a daughter and a husband[of 2 different dying cancer patients]would meet one morning in the coffee break room at the hospital and then decide to have sex at lunch that same day? I know grief personally and professionally and this behavior was an insult to everyone experiencing tremendous loss. I believe this, and another scene shortly after this, were included in this book for sales only.Grief can cause us to do many things but [and I am anything but a prude] I was no longer interested in the way these people chose to handle it.

Torch by Cheryl Strayed
A Book Review By Becky Holland
Vintage Contemporaries – Publisher
ISBN-10: 0345805615
ISBN-13: 978-0345805614
* I received this book to review

Teresa Rae Wood has this theory in life – it is time to do good, work hard and be incredible. In fact, she tells this to her listeners of the radio show, ‘Modern Pioneers.’ Though she has had her own fair share of troubles and challenges, including a bad marriage and typical mother-children difficulties and financial issues, she tries to follow her own advice.

Then … Teresa is told she has cancer and it is more than likely terminal. It was like the very thread that held her family together began to unravel, and piece by piece, the fabrics of their lives were torn apart.

Knowing Cheryl Strayed’s own personal past, you can see a few of her own life and crisis woven into the story. It is a beautiful piece of work that takes the reader through a painful walk through a hard time in life.

But in the end, it all work out.

I decided to read this book after finishing Wild. I really liked Wild and had a hard time putting it down. I heard that she wrote another book named Torch which revolves around her mother's death which she mentions several times in Wild. However, the story was written as a fiction and did not have much depth. Maybe my expectations were too high when I reached for this book but I just could not get into it. Half way thru I decided to stop reading it.

Having recently inhaled Cheryl Strayed's Wild, I was then eager to read her first novel, Torch. With similar life experiences as the female protagonist Claire- a parent who suffers a gruesome death at the hands of cancer, various familial dysfunction, and a previous longing for the consummate romantic relationship- I bookmarked passage after passage which seemed to have come from my own thought processes during my near-identical life experiences:

Years passed. . . Slowly, stingingly, she forgave them [her parents] without their knowing about it. She accepted the way things were- the way they were- and found that acceptance was not what she'd imagined it would be. It wasn't a room she could lounge in, a field she could run through. It was small and scroungy, in constant need of repair. (52)

Strayed does not romanticize life, but, instead reveals it in all its awkwardness, ugliness, and blessedness.
In addition, Strayed is not only author, but also neologist with the creation of parentified- "' . . . where a child who is still a child doesn't get to be a child entirely because he or she has to take on things that children shouldn't have to take on . . . common in single-parent families- where the child has to look after younger siblings, cook meals, and stuff like that'" (56). Recalling my own childhood, I can easily see how my older sister was definitely parentified, and certainly not of her own volition at the tender age of fourteen.
For the purposes of book club, an assortment of vegetarian dishes in honor of Teresa Rae Wood would be appropriate. Perhaps a scalloped potato casserole with peas along with herbal tea would be ideal items offered at your book club discussion.

Like other reviewers, I feel that Cheryl Strayed did a great job of creating characters with complexity. They struggled after Teresa's death, but they kept living as best they could and they learned how to "bear what you cannot bear" (a phrase I got from Strayed herself. Strayed talked in an interview about bearing the weight of her backpack, affectionately nicknamed "Monster," on the Pacific Crest Trail, and also bearing the facts of her life, such as her mom dying.). This was encouraging for me to see in times when I feel like I cannot bear things that are going on in my life.

Each of the characters in Torch were likable (to me) and Strayed seemed to view them in the most positive light possible. Even if they made mistakes, I was led to believe that they were good people. I have not yet lost anyone particularly close to me such as a parent, but I could still relate to the characters in their humanity.

Torch was sad because of the topic but it did not feel overly heavy, maybe because of Strayed's writing. I skipped the parts I couldn't read and alternated reading this book with another book to diffuse it a bit.

This is the third book that I've read from Cheryl Strayed. I read Wild first, and then Tiny Beautiful Things. Tiny Beautiful Things was my favorite, but the books altogether helped me understand Strayed better as a person, since they all form a cohesive picture of who she is. Overall, I love Cheryl Strayed and her writing does not disappoint. Highly recommended!

Teresa Rae shares this phrase with the listeners of her radio show. This show passed on homely hints and was wildly popular with her listeners. Her children, Claire and Joshua, frankly found it embarrassing, but this was before their mother is diagnosed with cancer.
After the years of struggle as a single mother, the establishment of a surrogate community in a tiny rural town, and the comfort of a war marriage; cancer crashes into their lives. Bruce, her husband, Teresa and Claire fight fiercely. Joshua goes to ground in an inability to face the illness.
This is a lovely book of a real family with with real strengths and weaknesses. The story is well told. And the grief and aftermath of Teresa's illness stayed with me for weeks. If I were to choose a definitive novel on the growth of a family and the devastation of cancer, this may very well be the book. People don't always act how we would judge to be good, but this book gives us luminous evidence that they do the best "good" that they can. I am very discriminating on the portrayal of grief, and I feel this book does it very well. This book is a strong recommend.

Cheryl Strayed's premiere novel is a gem. The characters are incredibly complex and startlingly human--you cannot completely love or hate a single one of them. No matter how terrible or beautiful their thoughts and actions, they are narrated by a voice of unabashed honesty that explains without apologizing, suggests without digression. The book explores some of the darkest emotions we all feel at some point in our lives, in a way that will make you blush, laugh out loud and cry, all within the same page. I loved the way the novel picked up on such slight details that told such monumental stories about who we are and how we are bound together, such as a cassette tape daughter Claire swiped from her fleeting lover's home that ends up playing a pivotal role in her stepfather's grieving process. Torch provides hope without being saccharine, remaining entirely real through the end. Definitely a must-read this summer.

The life of Teresa Rae Wood, the thirty-eight-year old main protagonist of Cheryl Strayed's richly textured novel Torch, is thrown into chaos when she gets some devastating news. Lately she's been wracked with pain as if her spine was a zipper and someone was squeezing it and pushing into her organs "as if they were butter or dough." Teresa learns she only has seven months to live, her body is riddled cancer, the tumors spreading like a wild fire, growing in her spine.

Obviously, she's devastated, but even more so is Bruce, her life partner and her two children Joshua and Claire. Bruce vows to stand by her, but the shock of the news is almost too much for him to stomach. Working as a radio talk show host and living in the small town of Midden in rural Minnesota, Teresa's mantra is that we're all "modern pioneers," her attitude is "to work hard, do good and always be incredible."

The realization it really is cancer crackles starkly through this family. Always the stoical, Teresa tells Joshua and Claire that everything is going to be OK and that she has given them all the tools and all the love they'll need to get them through life. It's as though the cancer is bringing them close, allowing them to understand how deeply they love and how intricately bound they are to each other,

It isn't long before Teresa is gone and Bruce, Joshua and Claire are left to face their sorrow and loss as they struggle with a new way of seeing the world, each of them distorted and unveiled by layers of grief. Before her death, their intentions were no doubt noble but without Teresa to hold them together the family slowly fractures and disintegrates, becoming "a leaner, sparser thing." Claire and Joshua become two people wandering in the wilderness, each of them holding the end of a string.

Bruce wants desperately to keep his adopted family together, the initial intention was to comfort Joshua and Claire in their grief, but he has his own problems. The pain of Teresa's death washes through him in waves. He's virtually crippled with angst and even debates taking his own life. He makes only the feeblest attempts to connect to Joshua and Claire and the announcement of his marriage to Kathy, a kindhearted neighbor, so soon after their mother's death, sends emotional shockwaves through the siblings.

Fueled by his mother's illness and his own sense of disassociation, his version of coping, Joshua comes loose from his very faltering moorings. He's eventually suspended from school for truancy, becoming a small town drug dealer, selling crystal meth and dope on the side, ultimately getting his teenage girlfriend pregnant and subsequently getting into trouble with the law.

No matter how carefully Claire approaches her mother's death, her insecurities become more insurmountable. Claire doesn't want to be consoled - she wants one thing and one thing only - for her mother to live. At the hospital she meets Bill, a forty something man who is going through a similar crisis with his wife, and through her unexpected affair with him, she begins to question her love for David, her boyfriend.

Amongst all the confusion and anger and self-doubt the author presents a remarkable story of courage and love. Throughout the novel, Bruce, Claire and Joshua are faced with some momentous choices, most significant is their inability to communicate their grief - although they are a close family, obviously the sharing of such intimate emotion does not come easy for them.

Clare doesn't know what is wrong with her; she only knows that something changed when her mother got cancer. When his mother gets sick Joshua cannot bear to look at her and he never visits her in hospital - he shuts down, forcing his mind to go separate and blank. Through Kathy, Bruce feels a surge of joy seize his heart, yet his sorrow for Teresa is always palpable.

However much these people hurt they can't shake loose all of Teresa's optimism and cheer, her munificence and her grace, and also her indestructible belief that to be incredible was the most ordinary thing in the entire world. What begins as a somewhat depressing treatise on death and dying ends up being a trenchant story of great courage and resilience.

Claire, Bruce and Joshua do eventually move on, move away and move forward past Teresa. Their journey is one of a small glimmer of solace, "the sweet tendrils of optimism" that eventually appear through all the pain. Mike Leonard July 06.

Interesting read and story. Characters are a bit scattered and some of the happenings in their lives are bizarre. Also, I don't understand how the cover of the book has anything to do with the story.
I read Cheryl Strayed's "Wild" first so I was expecting great things from this book. Maybe it was her introduction into writing.

Maybe "pleasant" isn't the right word to use, considering the subject matter... but I loved the way this book was written. I thought Cheryl Strayed did an excellent job of introducing the characters and describing them in such a way that you really felt like you knew them. I am the single parent of an 18 year old son and kept trying to imagine what his life would be like if something happened to me... I thought she did an excellent and realistic job of describing the family's reactions... I felt so bad for Claire, though I did have a hard time with Bruce remarrying so quickly (though I did see that relationship coming). I finished the book on Sunday and found myself thinking about the characters all day -- I kept thinking I couldn't wait to get back to reading to see what they were doing -- then remembered I was done! I highly recommend this book and look forward to more writing from this gifted author.

This book seems to really reflect real life. I was kind of just weirded out at the beginning, but by the end of the book I came to love it and the characters. And the relationship between a brother and a sister.

After reading the first chapter of Cheryl Strayed's Torch, I almost opted to close the book for fear that it would be a total "downer". Because several other reviewers expressed similar thoughts, I decided to stay with it and was rewarded with a beautiful and real story, with characters about whom I came to care and with whom I deeply identified. I experienced the loss of my father when I was 11, and then my mother when I was 23. As an only child, my world was rocked over these deaths in ways I continue to realize as I grow older (just turned 59).

Each of the main characters experienced and coped with the death of Teresa in different and at times extreme ways - not necessarily realizing their behaviors were strategies for sustaining through profound grief and loss. Experiencing their separate journeys over the course of the book reminded me of my own struggles after the loss of parents, and even brought new memories of thoughts and actions from my past trials with grief that furthered my ongoing processing and healing.

Probably the most powerful aspect of the book for me was that despite each character's individual ways of coping, acting out or moving through, they maintained their love and tenderness for each other - even in the face of concerns, anger and judgments. Entirely believable and uplifting.

In her debut novel, Cheryl Strayed demonstrates not only an adept and graceful touch with language, but also a hard-won understanding of the impact of grief and its resonance within a family. Though a work of fiction, the nuanced gestures she lends to her characters imbue the story with such reality that I immediately felt these were people I knew; people not unlike myself. Specifically, the love-hate, push-pull, typically antagonistic relationship between late-stage teens and their mother (and her equally wrenching and awkward attempts to overcome it) was so precisely limned as to virtually resurrect that young person in myself. From a technical perspective, that Cheryl managed to convey such a gamut of emotions in lean, concise prose is a demonstration of her sizable talent. For all of these reasons, and as a well-versed reader, I highly recommend it as a beautiful literary adventure. As a grief counselor, I further recommend it as a gifted portrait of the ways in which something as typically heartbreaking as a familial death can reverberate throughout one's life.

I've read and been incredibly impressed with this author's essays and other work and then found her debut novel.

After fleeing a bad marriage, Theresa moves her two children as far away as possible, finds love, her true self and then at way too young, she gets cancer and dies soon after.

This is a story of love and grief and how we deal with pain, numbing it and then struggling to move through it with grace and compassion. It affected me on a profound level. The characters are real, human, and ordinarily incredible.

Two of my favorite quotes:
"The only place was him, alone in his body, alone in his life, having to make it all okay by himself, from scratch."

"She didn't know whether she believed that time healed all wounds, but she believed it healed some. ...time had begun to do its work. She could feel it inside her - softening, safening, making ordinary what was once appalling. She didn't know whether she liked it or not, this healing."

Amen, sister.

So genuine are the characters and events that this book generated tears without making me feel as though I'd been manipulated.

The character I most identify with is the one who dies, which makes for a strange reading experience. The novel feeds into every parent's fear of dying before a child is at an age of independence, and of course, the grieving characters' choices will manifest parental and spousal disappointment for any reader. In spite of this, we must concede that the decisions made are perfectly understandable under the circumstances, and therefore all the more realistic.

Full disclosure: Cheryl and I are acquaintances, and we see each other at social functions (such as her readings!) every now and then.

Having said that, I wouldn't be writing this review if I didn't feel her book showed genuine talent, with an eye for detail that makes her characters seem fully developed. What's perhaps most interesting to me about this book is that, though it deals with grief and loss, it's never dragged down by its own weight. That is to say, the characters' lives continue, things happen, people move through their grief somehow, and emerge back into life. I think this book would be especially useful for anyone who's lost someone like this.

A seemingly strong family can be torn asunder by terrible tragedy. This book is about the family of an accomplished and inspirational woman who scatter and flail about when she is diagnosed with an awful disease. Watching them suffer is painful, because they are such realistic and lovable characters.

Full disclosure: Cheryl and I are acquaintances, and we see each other at social functions (such as her readings!) every now and then.

Having said that, I wouldn't be writing this review if I didn't feel her book showed genuine talent, with an eye for detail that makes her characters seem fully developed. What's perhaps most interesting to me about this book is that, though it deals with grief and loss, it's never dragged down by its own weight. That is to say, the characters' lives continue, things happen, people move through their grief somehow, and emerge back into life. I think this book would be especially useful for anyone who's lost someone like this.

A seemingly strong family can be torn asunder by terrible tragedy. This book is about the family of an accomplished and inspirational woman who scatter and flail about when she is diagnosed with an awful disease. Watching them suffer is painful, because they are such realistic and lovable characters.

first of all, I had run across the author before, first in WILD, then "Tiny Beautiful Things" and I so much admire her raw honesty that goes hand in hand with so much heart. Plus and most important, I love the way she writes: she's and excellent storyteller and puts words together so beautifully.

Certainly enjoyed this book. I have read both of Cheryl's books and feel that I should have read Torch first, then Wild second, as one seems to lead into the other. Very good reading with captivating content. Would recommend both books.