Marital Sadomasochism
It seems that all married couples come to revile each other at some level in America. At least in fiction. To paraphrase a great writer, all unhappy marriages are alike when it comes to fictional suburbia. Husbands and wives tend to devolve into a sadomasochistic relationship that may actually involve deviant sexual appetites replete with whips and chains or may not, but the end result is always the same. They wind acting just like the couple at the center of this novel who seek out excitement as well as simple human connection with extramarital partners. The result is usually disaster, but in this particular case, the disaster is a conflagration that threatens to melt into nothingness every last thing they can find to hold dear.
Suburban Conformity
The fire begins quite literally. That dissolute marriage is located in the soullessness of suburbia and in a desperate attempt to escape the conformity such homogeneity coerces, they burn down the house. This literal crucible of escape will have consequences they cannot possibly imagine as a lesion is eventually learned—at least taught—that another word for conformity is stability. And sometimes that is not a bad thing, especially in a marriage that has produced children.
Gun Culture
Music for Torching was published the very same year that the Columbine School Massacre occurred, and like real life in America, the quiet build to its explosive climax has only become ever more relevant with each passing year. The novel is not actually about gun culture and the violence to which it moves relentlessly and with each passing year that point has also become relevant. School shootings are quietly constructed in the shadows and on the periphery of what at the time seem to be the much bigger domestic issues and concerns of the parents of the parties involved. The devil is in the details and what used to require a careful reading to spot the inevitable is perhaps less dependent upon reader scrutiny.
