Book Review - Torch

Torch by Cheryl Strayed
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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 know if you've read "Wild" previously. So, I knew the story, but not all the details. I decided to persevere with the book anyway, because I had faith in Strayed's storytelling ability. I knew the book would be sad. I knew it would make me cry. I didn't know it would also make me angry. I actually threw the book across the room at one point and decided to stop reading it.

But I still persevered.

There was a moment at the end where I thought I was going to have to relive what, for me, was one of the saddest moments in "Wild," having to do with her mother's horse, Lady. When reading "Wild," this particular section affected me so much that my husband stopped what he was doing (in the middle of playing an MMORPG, and that, ladies and gentlemen, means he thought it was an emergency) to come to the bedroom and investigate why his wife was bawling like the world was ending.

But I still persevered.

And I kind of wish I hadn't. I really liked Strayed after Wild, and now I'm kind of ambivalent. I don't know how true these details were to her story, but it was pretty clear that much of it was ripped directly from her life. It made me alternately angry at people in her life and at her. It was heartbreaking in places, and in other places I just boggled at the choices people made. It seemed hyper-real, in the way that sometimes, when I tell people about the "year of hell" in our lives they can't believe that that would actually happen to a person. Sometimes, when too much happens, it seems like it has to be fiction. It has to be fake. And I'm well aware by my own experience that it's not always the case, but it still stretches that part of our brain that is desperately trying to suspend disbelief.

I think that Strayed's writing style of writing has certainly evolved since writing "Torch". She is much more eloquent in "Wild" and has learned the art of the narrative through trial and error, partly through writing "Torch" it seems.

This was an okay book. It isn't brilliant enough to make it one I'd recommend, because it also is a very provoking book, but it was definitely... okay.

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