The Torturer's Wife (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Glave's second collection is a disquieting, graphic, semiexperimental compendium examining violence and ignorance in and out of wartime. After opening with a contemporary relationship drama, Glave makes the jarring transition to armed conflicts, invasion and genocide. What most unifies these works is what's left unsaid—secrets are a constant, and there are virtually no names. Glave's style, full of interruptions, ellipses, unconventional text treatments and poemlike breaks, sends each story whirling thickly toward its end: in the title story, a woman called She is haunted by grotesque nightmares of dismembered body parts raining on her house and garden, after discovering her high-ranking husband's wartime atrocities. In the allegorical Milk/Sea; Sentience, the dreams of a sleeping village of women heal war's wounds. Between takes a step back to focus on a couple, telling the story of two racist gay men in an interracial relationship; cleverly, Glave refers to both as one of them. Laced with grisly details, this daring but uneven collection may not find a wide audience, but makes an intriguing experiment in post-postmodern war fiction. (Nov.)
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Review

"Few of the nine short stories in Glave's second collection are explicitly Queer. But his themes are universal: the trauma of haunting memories, the puzzle of erotic longing, the intersection of intimacy and desire, the gnawing disease of unacknowledged racism, the parallel horrors of war and anti-Gay violence. . . Glave's daringly experimental but eloquent prose style, often elliptical and interspersed with lines of poetry, is a challenge. But a deep, attentive reading will yield exciting literary rewards." - Richard Labonte, Seattle Gay News --Richard Labonte, Seattle Gay News

"Glave's prose is vibrant, and immediate. It carries the reader along as it delves deep into the grim places of the human mind. . . . Putting this book down, I felt I will go back at some point soon and reread, in order to more fully understand and appreciate this beautiful and intriguing look at post-postmodern war fiction." --Alan Chin, The Examiner

"I didn't always enjoy reading these stories, but I left feeling their importance. Glave's tales of desire, love, and fear during times of trauma simply should not be ignored. . . . The stories in this book are not pleasant, but they are important nevertheless. I would love to see Middle America give this book a try." --Martin Goffeney --The Kosmopolitan Online

"In May, Glave stood up at a Caribbean literary festival and bravely criticized antigay remarks made by the Jamaican prime minister. Now he delivers a story collection focusing on the redemption of desire amid violence and homophobia." --The Advocate

"Short story collections are as good as their authors, as is the case with these three books. Lambda Award-winning author Thomas Glave followed his first collection (Whose Song? and Other Stories) with an even better set in The Torturer's Wife, a group of violent and disturbing but nonetheless compelling tales." --Jesse Monteagudo, AfterElton.com

"Thomas Glave has emerged as a unique author within GLBT letters, and his latest collection of short stories, The Torturer's Wife, stands to solidify his reputation. Indeed, while many of the books marketed to a gay readership rely on facile themes, Glave bravely defies the usual commercial interests by dealing with difficult subjects clothed in experimental prose." --Eduardo Febles, The Gay & Lesbian Review

"Thomas Glave, who has been compared to fellow O. Henry Award winner Richard Wright, returns with his second collection of short fiction, THE TORTURER'S WIFE. In passionate, disquieting prose, Glave bears eloquent witness to human traumas both large and small." --Bookforum

In "The Torturer's Wife," Thomas Glave has reproduced Lady Macbeth's descent into murder and madness. Set in a modern paradise controlled by terror, people disappear during midnight flights over the ocean, while a charismatic military leader parades his stunningly lovely wife through mansions and banquets. This is a story that, once read, will replay itself in your nightmares forever. --The Kenyon Review, Fall, 2008

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers (January 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872864669
• ISBN-13: 978-0872864665
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #310,135 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Redeeming Desire, March 1, 2009

By	Amos Lassen (Little Rock, Arkansas) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Glave, Thomas. "The Torturer's Wife", City Life. 2009'

Redeeming Desire

Amos Lassen

Thomas Glave gives is a collection of short stories that look at violence and ignorance during wartime. The focus here is on the horrors of living with terror, under dictatorship, with anti-gay violence, with secrets and erotic longings and the price of desire and intimacy. His prose is not hampered by those that are afraid to speak; he puts everything before the reader.
Glave fearlessly describes murder and madness and his prose is unconventional--he breaks his stories when he wants to and there are interruptions in his texts. In his opening story, "The Torturer's Wife" he gives us a woman haunted by nightmares of body parts shortly after discovering that husband is involved in the kinds of atrocities that she dreams about. In another story the wounds of war are healed. Another selection deals with an interracial couple, in which both partners are racists,
Many will find this book alarming but the beauty of it is in the way Glave expresses himself and gives his views of life after war. I found it to be enlightening and brilliantly written and that the stories do not disappear into the pages of the book but rather into the recesses of the reader's mind.
Glave gives is characters that have not been allowed to speak in mist cases because they have been silenced by the society in which they live. Their stories come to us in beautiful language which makes what they relate seem very real.
There are stories that look at relationships between lovers and about the problems that exist in gay relationships. Glave looks at sensuality, racism and class distinctions as well as at intimate moments like when one of a couple is diagnosed with HIV. Dark truths emerge and we see divisions between partners as well as between them and the community as a whole.
Glave's prose is immediate and vibrant. We see what happens when a self-image is shattered and one struggles to define who he is. This is exciting reading and it leaves the reader with a great deal to think about.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Revelatory Stories, February 18, 2009

By	Eric Anderson (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Torturer's Wife brings together a collection of stories from acclaimed writer Thomas Glave. It seems fitting the book is dedicated to Nadine Gordimer who is also a fan of Glave's work. Like much of Gordimer's writing, Glave's stories focus on characters who haven't been allowed a voice or whose ability to speak has been silenced through death and the machinations of government and/or society. Though the subject matter is heavy, the author's beautiful use of language gives meaning and substance to what are sometimes horrific events. More importantly, Glave bears witness to incidents often ignored just as he did in his collection of essays WORDS TO OUR NOW. However, in this book a poetic voice is given to these characters so that their stories are transmuted into a mythic structure, giving resonance to their struggles which speaks beyond the limits of their time and location.

The title story focuses on a privileged wife who has discovered that her husband is involved with the torture and death of political prisoners. In the 1970s the Argentinian right-wing military cracked down on dissidents; thousands were tortured, drugged and flown out to be dumped into the ocean. In Glave's story the voices of these victims rise out of the ocean to assail this woman's ears and their body parts fall from the sky to litter her home and garden. More than the survivors of the violent political conflicts portrayed in heart-rending flashing glimpses, these stories are populated with the dead who have been swept aside, their tongues cut out and corpses annihilated. Glave manages to not only give a voice to these casualties of history, but a face and a body so that their physical bulk cannot be denied or ignored.

While many of the stories refer to specific struggles in time of war, others such as "Between" and "South Beach , 1992" speak about interpersonal conflicts between lovers, and specifically troubles which occur within gay relationships. The barriers of racial and class difference are explored just as sensual discoveries are made. Fear and disgust are revealed when it's discovered a partner is HIV+. These intensely-felt intimate moments between men reveal darker truths about their feelings and often-ignored divisions within the gay community.

Glave's narratives seamlessly interweave components of speech with descriptions of place and the internal thoughts of the characters. His olfactory-driven prose give an immediacy to the time, location and physicality of his characters, making his stories come vibrantly alive. Many of these stories explore what it means when the terms in which a person defines herself or himself are shattered, leaving them grasping for language with which to articulate who they are. Identity is divided in order for the individual to cope with the extremity of emotion and maintain aspects of themselves they don't want to lose. Glave employs radically diverse styles and structures to describe this process making his writing some of the most exciting and spirited I've read for a long time.

3.0 out of 5 stars Heady and Psychological, April 6, 2009

By	Jaqua Williams (Suitland, Maryland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Initially, it read like a Toni Morrison novel, basing the comparison on her ability to write a scene or character through a deep sense of pathology of what this character and their culture is about and what motives them.
Thomas Glave doesn't disappoint by forcing the reader to immerse themselves into a fragmented often deeply esoteric exoticism that borders on psychosis as is the case of the title story "The Torturer's Wife".

He in a sense also invites the reader to understand the pain and focus of each character but leaves out racial and cultural descriptors to force the reader into a more universal comprehension, which I applaud him for, but secretly I disdain, because I wanted to make his stories personal and intimate to me.

This is not a book that makes for light reading or something you could ever fully discuss in a book club. Like Morrison, it make take rereading to fully understand and consume it whole.