MADreads

Good grief

December 13th, 2006 Lisa - Central

Why would someone read a novel about grief?  I asked myself that when I began reading Torch by debut author Cheryl Strayed.  As the book begins, you find out that one of the main characters, Teresa Rae Wood, has just learned she is dying of terminal cancer.  She has 2 kids: Claire, who is away at college, and Joshua who is a senior in high school.  She also lives with her boyfriend Bruce, who the kids consider their father.  Since you fall in love with this woman from the get-go, you know her death is going to hurt, but you’re kind of stuck, because you find yourself loving her family right away too and you need to know what happens to them.

Teresa is a single mom who takes her kids and leaves her abusive husband to reinvent herself in a small Minnesota town.  She has a radio show, a kind of wide-eyed exploration of the world show, which she signs-off with the words, “be incredible.”  The family, especially Teresa, becomes beloved by the townfolk.  So when she dies, the whole place falls apart.  What is so compelling about the novel is watching Claire, Josh and Bruce go through the process of figuring out what to do with the enormous pain that is all of a sudden the big nasty elephant in their lives.  You don’t necessarily like what they do.  As a matter of fact, you get pretty upset by their behavior.  So do the other characters.  But that’s what makes this book so real, the people so human.  We all know people (or ourselves) who have reacted to grief in ways that don’t make sense.

 I guess the reason you read books about grief is to see how others do it and to know that people survive it.

Entry Filed under: Literary Fiction