Tinderbox: A Novel
This well-crafted novel from Gornick (A Private Sorcery) tells the story of a family knocked off-balance with warm assurance. Myra is the definition of graceful aging, but her carefully structured life is interrupted when her son and his family move back in with her while his wife, Rachida, completes her medical training. At the same time, Myra hires Eva, a Peruvian Jewish woman just arrived in New York, as a housemaid and nanny. Eva is sweet and diligent, but Myra, a psychologist, quickly notices signs of troubling behavior. Eva's issues and their causes hover in the background as the marriage of Myra's son, Adam, sputters and her daughter, Caro, successful in her career but stalled otherwise, tries to work through her own problems. The novel builds to a dramatic crisis, but it maintains a level tone throughout; sometimes this formality or equanimity takes away from the reading experience, as when conversations seem unnaturally articulate, but in general, turning the pages is a pleasure. There is betrayal, sadness, and tragedy, and particular richness in details about the varieties of the characters' Jewish experiences—Eva and Rachida come from communities in Peru and Morocco, respectively, while Myra's family is ambivalent about religion—that provide interest and structure, but apart from all this, it's the realistic portrayal of relationships and personalities that carries the book. (Sept.)