Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
360th out of 1,116 books
—
1,882 voters
Torch
by
Cheryl Strayed (Goodreads Author)
"Be incredible!" That's the advice Teresa Rae Wood gives the listeners of her popular local radio show, Modern Pioneers!, a kind of hippie Praire Home Companion. Teresa has taken the advice to heart in her own life. As a teen mother and abused wife, she escaped with her two children to rural Minnesota, fell in love with a local carpenter, and raised good kids, Claire and J...more
Paperback, 336 pages
Published
January 8th 2007
by Mariner Books
(first published February 1st 2006)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
3,000)
i'm kind of moved to see so many people review this now that cheryl strayed has finally told us she is sugar of the rumpus (she "came out" on valentine's day, 2012). sugar is so much loved, so much justly loved, that her readers are flocking to her books and her articles to read more by her.
if you have followed sugar's advice columns (and they are NOT ordinary advice columns: they are masterpieces of wisdom, wit, beauty, and life) this book won't entirely surprise you. it belongs with the same p...more
if you have followed sugar's advice columns (and they are NOT ordinary advice columns: they are masterpieces of wisdom, wit, beauty, and life) this book won't entirely surprise you. it belongs with the same p...more
11 likes · like · see review
view all 9 comments
Sometimes a book becomes more than a book...for me, usually it is a book of poetry, or a poem in particular, something to hang on to when things are not going well. You know those days/weeks/God help you if it's months, when things just falling badly like dominos, one falling brick after another, until you are wondering if there is an ancient gypsy curse on your family or what. This has been my March. A friend had recommended awhile ago that I read an essay in The Sun by Cheryl Strayed which led...more
I read Torch immediately after reading Wild, frankly because I was hungry for more of Strayed's writing. I wonder how Torch would read if I hadn't read Wild first, because Torch is definitely a fictional memoir even though I am not sure if Strayed would necessarily say that. (Anyone notice that she says that her brother, unlike the character, was never arrested for dealing meth? That wouldn't rule out the possibility of him having used or dealt meth though, right? ;) Either way, I think knowing...more
I purchased the book simply because it was by the author of the memoir "Wild." When I started reading the novel, I had to check the cover a couple times to see if I had put down Torch and accidentally picked up Wild instead. The thought that went through my head at several points in the beginning sections of the book was, "If you copy from yourself, is it still plagiarism?" At one point and entire long paragraph was an exact copy of a paragraph in Wild. Perhaps it wouldn't have irritated me so m...more
I confess that when I first picked up this book, I had no intention of bringing it home with me. Who wants to read about death and its terrible aftermath--loss, grief, anger? As it turns out--I did.
From the very first sentence, I was hooked. I read the second sentence, and third and fourth, until I realized that I would rather be reading it at home than standing in an aisle. As soon as I got home I opened the book and read it non-stop for two days. I devoured every single word.
What is amazing ab...more
From the very first sentence, I was hooked. I read the second sentence, and third and fourth, until I realized that I would rather be reading it at home than standing in an aisle. As soon as I got home I opened the book and read it non-stop for two days. I devoured every single word.
What is amazing ab...more
After everyone freaked out about Wild (which is not available for normal people to read/buy yet) I had to find out who this Cheryl Strayed person is, so I got her first book.
I have a hard time with this star system. Three is too low, but that's what my gut is telling me now that's it's been a week since I've finished it. There were times, a lot of times, where I LOVED this book. It's incredibly well written and Strayed has a way of phrasing super complex emotional/feeling things in ways that ma...more
I have a hard time with this star system. Three is too low, but that's what my gut is telling me now that's it's been a week since I've finished it. There were times, a lot of times, where I LOVED this book. It's incredibly well written and Strayed has a way of phrasing super complex emotional/feeling things in ways that ma...more
10 likes · like · see review
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 to 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 or...more
After fleeing a bad marriage, Theresa moves her two children as far away as possible, finds love, her true self and then at way to 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 or...more
Jul 17, 2012
Jackie
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
available-at-library,
summer-2012-done
My blog for Book Reviews!
Chance. It's funny how things can happen by chance. A chance meeting. Hell, I'm sure your life has offered up chances that have lead to bigger things that you never imagined would come from something so simple.
This is exactly how Torch begins. Teresa Wood is a local celebrity in a small town where she is the host of a radio show. Her advice to her listeners as she ends each show - Work hard, do good, be incredible. And really, her advice is how she lived. She had a simp...more
Chance. It's funny how things can happen by chance. A chance meeting. Hell, I'm sure your life has offered up chances that have lead to bigger things that you never imagined would come from something so simple.
This is exactly how Torch begins. Teresa Wood is a local celebrity in a small town where she is the host of a radio show. Her advice to her listeners as she ends each show - Work hard, do good, be incredible. And really, her advice is how she lived. She had a simp...more
How much of my reaction to a book is based upon my expectations for it? Perhaps that's a subject for another day, but I bring it up here because Torch by Cheryl Strayed was a book that I was almost afraid to read. After devouring Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things, I moved on to Torch with mixed feelings. Rarely do I end up liking an author's fiction and nonfiction equally. In fact, if I really like someone's nonfiction, her fiction usually disappoints me. (Expectations, again.)
Then I read the jack...more
Then I read the jack...more
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...more
Years passed. . . Slowly, stingingly, she forgave...more
I picked up Torch from the library because I loved loved loved "Wild," Cheryl Strayed's memoir of her trek along the Pacific Coast Trail. I identified with her. I liked her style, I liked her writing, and I loved her story. When I found out that she'd published a work of fiction some seven years ago, I couldn't resist!
I might should have resisted.
It's not so much that this is a bad book, but this is a very thinly veiled memoir of what actually happened to Strayed, much of which you will already...more
I might should have resisted.
It's not so much that this is a bad book, but this is a very thinly veiled memoir of what actually happened to Strayed, much of which you will already...more
I am a huge fan of Cheryl Strayed. I very much enjoyed her later novel, Wild. And I have been moved by her perspective in interviews I have seen. The quality of the Strayed's writing in Torch is top notch, as would be expected. The only reason I gave only 4 stars, instead of 5, was because I found the book so depressing it took a very long time to read. Where Wild was very hard to put down, this evoked too much emotion of sadness.
Torch seems to be very much the same storyline as Wild, involving...more
Torch seems to be very much the same storyline as Wild, involving...more
I always think of Anne Carson's preface to Euripides when I think about grief: "Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief." This kept coming up for me throughout Torch.
I found myself watching the writing and reading the book as though a close friend had written it (the writing felt very familiar, as though I read it weekly, as though I stamped some particular turns of phrase into my memory) and it reminded me that if I start wr...more
I found myself watching the writing and reading the book as though a close friend had written it (the writing felt very familiar, as though I read it weekly, as though I stamped some particular turns of phrase into my memory) and it reminded me that if I start wr...more
OK, the subject of this book could not be more depressing: a mother of two in her thirties is diagnosed with fast-moving cancer and dies within weeks of her diagnosis (no, that's not a spoiler). And as you can imagine, the aftermath with her family is hardly sunshine and roses. But Strayed is so adept at keeping this novel from becoming sappy, maudlin, overly depressing, or any of the faults that a book about this kind of subject matter typically has. Strayed is one of the most gifted writers I'...more
This book is really hard to review. It is very moving and well written but at the same time I couldn't wait until it was over. Grief is a very hard to live through, let alone write about (and read about). In this case the grief of the 3 remaining family members leads to some very self-destructive behavior, although Joshua may already have been headed in that direction even before his mother's illness and death. One distraction for me while reading the book was that I grew up in a different small...more
After reading Wild, I really wanted to read her fiction and really wanted to love it. I actually tried to read this book on three separate occasions (thinking maybe this book just wasn't fitting my "book mood" that week), and I still ended up not finishing it, which is rare for me. I wasn't able to connect to any of the characters, as I thought they all were selfish after the mother's death. The relationships between them and other supporting characters were also difficult for me to like, and th...more
This is one of those books that isn't about anything really. A woman gets cancer, she dies, her family navigates the aftermath. There's no suspense, no mystery to solve, no secret revealed by her mourning relatives. There is just day to day life and survival after sudden, horrible death strikes a family. In the hands of a lesser writer this would be trite or treacly. In Strayed's hands, this novel is luminous and deeply felt. I felt it deeply, and all of her characters were so deep, and did such...more
Once I started, I couldn't put this book down! Strayed and her 'extreme compassion' movement shines ever so brightly in this story about Terese, a woman who finds out that has interminable cancer and her family. The book bounces back and forth between her, her children, and her long time partner, Bruce. One of the things that I liked best about this book is the way that it tells stories about the less than admirable actions that each character takes, and then continues the storytelling without j...more
A friend whose significant other died recently of lymphoma lent me this book, and as I read it I wondered how she could bear to read it herself. The painfulness of the topic aside, it's a realistic look at first, the process of dying from cancer, and second, the effect of the death of a young mom on her two kids and their step-dad. Claire, the daughter, is at the U of Minnesota, and her brother is still in high school in a small Minnesota town. Each family member deals with the death differently...more
3 likes · like · see review
Most of the time I was reading this book I kept thinking that I didn't really like it that well, it was depressing, but as I got near the end I started to like it more. This is the story of what happens to a family when the person who holds everything together dies. How do the two young adult children and the "common law" father handle their lovely mother/wife dying? In a small town where everyone knows each other, sites are set low, and drugs run rampant.....how does everyone handle their grief...more
It's not often that I don't finish a book. I fell in love with Cheryl Strayed after reading Wild and Dear Sugar, so I was looking forward to consuming everything I could get my hands on. It's clear, though, that Torch isn't what made her for a reason. There is nothing wrong with the book, it just isn't very compelling. After reading the other books and being familiar with Strayed's story, I can't help but think of this as more of a therapeutic writing project for her to explore her feelings abou...more
Grief and how it is handled by different members of a rural family is well described in this novel.
The story revolves around how the survivors handle life after the matriarch dies of cancer. Each person has his or her own journey that is vividly laid out and not always with a bow on top. The daughter is in college, the son in high school and the father figure has a plan to end his life just a week after the mother's death unable to think about going on.
Strayed is a good writer and if you have re...more
The story revolves around how the survivors handle life after the matriarch dies of cancer. Each person has his or her own journey that is vividly laid out and not always with a bow on top. The daughter is in college, the son in high school and the father figure has a plan to end his life just a week after the mother's death unable to think about going on.
Strayed is a good writer and if you have re...more
In the months following Cheryl Strayed's "coming out" as the Dear Sugar advice columnist on The Rumpus, I've devoured her writing. To me this doesn't stand up to Wild, perhaps because it's a fictionalization. Don't let me 3 stars feel lukewarm to you though - they're three enthusiastic stars. Stories of grief, of rapid loss of a parent to cancer specifically hit me in a really personal place. My reaction is probably different from someone who hasn't been through this (although goodness knows man...more
I'm really unsure why this book has gotten so many good reviews. There was nothing endearing or redeeming about it. I understand flawed characters, but there was nothing remotely likable about any of them, including their relationships with each other. If it is a story about a mother's love and her legacy to her children, then it was a poor example. If it is a book about coping, and stages of grief, then it is also a poor example. Each character deals in the exact same way- with sex. And there i...more
This book tells what happens to a family after the mother dies from cancer. It felt like one of those really great films-Ordinary People or Inside The Bedroom. Vivid and heartbreaking.
Though not an upbeat book by any stretch of the imagination, Strayed has written a very believable account of a young family dealing with the death of their mother. Claire and Joshua (and their step-father) go through a difficult period as they face the death of Teresa, the person who has held them together. Each copes in his/her unique way, all very realistically portrayed. As a teacher who has watched students fall apart after a parent's death, I felt this book rang true from start to finish....more
I really really loved this book. It's very touching, poignant, sweet, sad, emotional, well-written... on and on I could go but I won't. One day a few months ago, I read an article about the author, Cheryl Strayed, and how she was 'outed' as a famous advice columnist. And lo and behold, the very next day I found this book at my local thrift store. I picked it up on a whim and am SO GLAD that I did. This will definitely be listed among my many favorite books.
One word of caution-- DON'T read the p...more
One word of caution-- DON'T read the p...more
I don't remember how I stumbled across Dear Sugar, just how lucky and moved I felt when I did. I read through the archives of her columns in a couple of days and then checked in each Thursday for the latest piece.
Like so many others on Goodreads, once I knew that Dear Sugar was Cheryl Strayed, I immediately sought out the work she did under that name. I read some essays online, and requested this book and her new memoir from my library. This book came in first.
This novel is about a woman who ge...more
Like so many others on Goodreads, once I knew that Dear Sugar was Cheryl Strayed, I immediately sought out the work she did under that name. I read some essays online, and requested this book and her new memoir from my library. This book came in first.
This novel is about a woman who ge...more
Strayed's debut novel hits with the weight of unwelcome news and tackles head-on some of the most difficult issues a family can face. Critics, who compare Torch to Joan Didion's best-selling memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, praise Strayed's attention to language and her ability to render grief__a topic with which she is intimately familiar, see below__through well-drawn, restrained details. Some critics comment that the narrative drags a bit after Teresa's death. Still, Strayed, primarily an
...more
I'm on a mother/child jag right now and this one fit the mold. This book looks at the relationship of grown children (just barely) to their mother who dies. And I suppose to the web of people that they would consider family & what happens to the web when she dies. Its an examination of grief and a story of emotional maturation. I could relate to this, I've frequently thought that as people I've loved have died it has tilted or skewed my world in ways that I never understood could happen and...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| How death of loved ones changes family dynamics | 1 | 10 | Mar 21, 2007 02:47pm |
Cheryl Strayed’s memoir, Wild, will be published by Knopf in March 2012. It will also be published in Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Italy. Her novel, Torch (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) was a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award and was selected by The Oregonian as one of the top ten books of the year by writers from the Pacific Northwest. Strayed’s writing has appeared i...more
More about Cheryl Strayed...
Share This Book
3 trivia questions
More quizzes & trivia...
“He was the most ordinary man in all the world, and yet in her memory he'd become luminous, like the prince in a fairy tale.”
—
13 people liked it
“It's a long life, sweetheart, and time heals all wounds.”
—
9 people liked it
More quotes…
