cover image The Torturer's Apprentice: Stories

The Torturer's Apprentice: Stories

John Biguenet. Ecco, $23 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-06-019835-0

Like a trapeze artist who disdains the use of a net, Biguenet takes considerable risks in this impressive debut collection, which shows the influence of both American realism and European intellectual fiction. Building his stories around hard-to-like people a medieval torturer, a beautiful masochist, a man who decides to purchase a slave Biguenet examines the complex moral conundrums they face. In ""The Vulgar Soul,"" a man named Tom Hogue begins to bleed for no apparent reason. He gradually realizes that his wounds are remarkably like stigmata, and he becomes an object of inspiration for religious seekers, though he himself remains unmoved by his condition. In ""My Slave,"" a prospective slaveowner describes with chilling dispassion his desire to own another person. He soon finds that he understands little of the ""complex mechanisms of discipline and punishment"" required of slaveholders, and even less of their effect on his own psyche. The title story sketches the life of an itinerant torturer, paid to extract confessions in the small towns of medieval Europe. The torturer's life is surprisingly banal, involving the hassles of guild membership and the difficulty of transporting heavy torture devices over poor roads, but his existence takes an unforeseen turn when he engages a young, gentle apprentice. Biguenet is equally surefooted in more domestic territory. ""Lunch with My Daughter"" is all subtext and guarded emotions, as a man struggles with revealing his true identity to his daughter over lunch. In ""The Open Curtain,"" a suburban salesman, burdened by routine, finds that he can take surprising pleasure in his own family. As skillful as they are ambitious, these uncompromising stories herald the arrival on the literary scene of a provocative new talent. (Feb.)