Fic­tion

Tin­der­box

  • Review
May 13, 2013

Lisa Gornick’s sec­ond nov­el, Tin­der­box, will cer­tain­ly be com­pared to Jonathan Franzen’s acclaimed The Cor­rec­tions. And it should be, since Gor­nick cre­ates a world of char­ac­ters every bit as com­plex and flawed — and as real — as Franzen’s sub­jects. Both nov­els sim­i­lar­ly spin a web of fam­i­ly entan­gle­ments that strain to hold its mem­bers aloft as expec­ta­tions shift beneath them. Of Franzen’s work Enter­tain­ment Week­ly wrote, his domes­tic dra­ma teach­es that, yes, you can go home again. But you might not want to.” And while the same les­son can be tak­en from Tin­der­box, Gor­nick also presents us with the hope of redemption.

Tin­der­boxs matri­arch is Myra, a suc­cess­ful psy­chother­a­pist in New York City. From the out­side she’s as cool and classy as the mut­ed suits she wears to work, but on the inside her lin­ing is unrav­el­ing. Myra’s son Adam, a fear-rid­dled intro­vert peren­ni­al­ly writ­ing an unfin­ished screen­play, and his fam­i­ly are mov­ing in to Myra’s brown­stone where noth­ing but a clas­si­cal piano chord she’s still prac­tic­ing has the slight­est imper­fec­tion. Along with Adam comes his wife, a Moroc­can-Jew­ish der­ma­tol­o­gist who is all rough edges, and their pre­co­cious young son, Owen. These guests her­ald a lifestyle shift, so through some cousins in Peru, Myra hires a house­keep­er, Eva, to help with the added respon­si­bil­i­ties. From a hum­ble back­ground, Eva arrives with lit­tle phys­i­cal bag­gage, but is heav­i­ly laden with the emo­tion­al sort. By plac­ing Eva’s dam­aged psy­che with­in range of Myra’s psy­cho­an­a­lyt­i­cal radar, Gor­nick forces both char­ac­ters to con­front trans­for­ma­tive eth­i­cal ques­tions. Tossed into the mix is Adam’s sis­ter, Caro, a child­less child-care work­er who drowns mem­o­ries of mis­takes in mid­night eat­ing binges. 

What exact­ly is tin­der? I con­sid­ered, after I’d come to know Gor­nick­’s char­ac­ters a bit. It’s dead wood that’s frayed at the ends, mak­ing it eas­i­er to catch fire. And as Gor­nick so capa­bly relates through her char­ac­ters, we all con­tain pieces that are old, splin­tered, and best thrown out, if we only could. Instead, more often, we accu­mu­late these volatile shards, until we are on the verge of reach­ing a flash­point. And then, it takes very lit­tle for the whole mess to ignite.

Many for­est plants require the sear­ing heat of fire to com­plete their life­cy­cle, and the lit­er­al and fig­u­ra­tive flames that rage through Myra’s fam­i­ly are sim­i­lar­ly life-chang­ing. In the wake of the blaze, the under­growth is cleared, leav­ing space for the shoots of new life and the frag­ile blos­soms of new love.

Discussion Questions