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She rolls her eyes when her patients complain about pimples. Here, in Detroit, with her office in a shopping mall, she feels like a glorified aesthetician. There, so many diseases present with the skin, dermatology is frontline medicine. Rachida’s head was still in Morocco when she chose dermatology, Adam says in the mumbly voice that has followed him from childhood, muffled now by the scraggly beard he grew at thirty with the hope of no longer being mistaken for a teen. Her yes is not even a yes, since Adam, her fragile second child-acrophobic, claustrophobic, equinophobic screenwriter of grade-B Westerns-is too avoidant to make a request, though the request is so clearly implied, it might as well be granted words. Myra cradles the phone to her ear as she gives the yes that she knows even now, this April Saturday morning, should be a no. It's a searingly perceptive, deeply honest novel about families and secrets, and power, and love. Tinderbox spins a suspenseful mystery of hidden traumas. In the rich tradition of Lionel Shriver, Jane Hamilton, and Anne Tyler, the psychoanalyst and novelist Lisa Gornick tells us a story about the tragedy of good intentions. As events spiral out of Myra's control, she learns that even a family as close-knit as her own can have plenty to hide. Their relationship slowly and inexorably becomes too close, too dependent, and, ultimately, terrifyingly destructive. Then, one afternoon, she settles into Myra's patient chair and begins to expose the secrets of her past. She spits in her hands to ward off evil spirits. She racks the household with screams from a night terror. Her phobia-addled son has just moved back in with his wife and child, and the new nanny, Eva, seems like a perfect addition: she cleans like a demon and irons like a dream, and she forms an immediate bond with Myra's grandson.īut as Eva, a Peruvian immigrant, reveals more of herself, what seemed a felicitous arrangement turns ominous. A quick study and an excellent judge of character, she thinks she knows what she's getting when she hires a nanny-it's her job, after all, to analyze people. (Sept.When you invite a stranger into your home, you never know who's really coming in. There is betrayal, sadness, and tragedy, and particular richness in details about the varieties of the characters' Jewish experiences%E2%80%94Eva and Rachida come from communities in Peru and Morocco, respectively, while Myra's family is ambivalent about religion%E2%80%94that provide interest and structure, but apart from all this, it's the realistic portrayal of relationships and personalities that carries the book. 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. 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. Eva is sweet and diligent, but Myra, a psychologist, quickly notices signs of troubling behavior. At the same time, Myra hires Eva, a Peruvian Jewish woman just arrived in New York, as a housemaid and nanny. 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. This well-crafted novel from Gornick (A Private Sorcery) tells the story of a family knocked off-balance with warm assurance.