Visible City
Description
"A glittering novel about fate, fantasy, and the anonymity of urban life." --O, The Oprah Magazine
"Read Visible City. Tova Mirvis's graceful yet vigorous New York novel is about the half-inadvertent window-peeping that city life enables, and where it can lead." --New York Magazine After chaotic days of wrangling and soothing her young children, Nina spends her evenings spying on the quiet, contented older couple across the street. But one night, through her same window, she spies a young couple in the throes of passion. Who are these people, and what happened to her symbol of domestic happiness? Soon, Nina crosses paths with both couples on the streets of her Upper West Side neighborhood and, as anonymity gives way to different forms of intimacy, all begin to confront their own desires and disappointments. Shrewdly and artfully, Mirvis explores the boundaries between our own lives and the lives of others. From its lavish ghost subway stations to its hidden stained-glass windows, Visible City conjures a New York City teeming with buried treasures. "An utterly perfect, deeply moving evocation of contemporary Manhattan [that] reminded me of Paula Fox and Laurie Colwin, and also those master chroniclers of the privileged classes, Wharton and Fitzgerald . . . Brilliant." --Joanna Smith Rakoff, Salon.com "Mirvis's meticulously choreographed novel surprises and moves us." --New York Times Book ReviewProduct Details
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About the Author
TOVA MIRVIS is the author of The Outside World and The Ladies Auxiliary, a national bestseller. The recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fiction Fellowship, her work has been broadcast on National Public Radio. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with her three children.
Reviews
"In a glittering novel about fate, fantasy, and the anonymity of urban life, a lonely New York City woman uses her son's toy binoculars to spy on couples whose intimacy she craves." -- O, The Oprah Magazine
"Mirvis's meticulously choreographed novel surprises and moves us. She shows the city for what it is behind all its windows and walls: a vast constellation of those 'truthful moments' her heroine seeks, as numerous as the stars." -- New York Times Book Review
"A complex novel about intersecting lives . . . [that] paints a wry, funny portrait of an Upper West Side in turmoil, where harried mothers endlessly ponder their skills at 'parenting' . . . What makes Visible City interesting is Mirvis's humane, intelligent perception of the emotional lives of her characters." -- Wall Street Journal
"Read Visible City. Mirvis's graceful yet vigorous New York novel is about the half-inadvertent window-peeping that city life enables, and where it can lead." -- New York Magazine
"Both a paean and a lament for a world contained within one neighborhood . . . [Visible City] brilliantly unfurls connections that overlap and intersect between strangers and lovers . . . Arresting." -- Jewish Daily Forward
"Mirvis won me over with her empathy with her characters, whose inner lives she probes with subtle insight and style in Visible City . . . Achingly well told." -- Minneapolis Star Tribune
"In this story of three unfulfilled couples living in Manhattan, Mirvis captures a prevalent inner struggle: the desire for change versus the fear of the unknown . . . Through these characters' feelings of fear, regret, and discontent, I was reminded never to lose sight of what brings me happiness." -- Real Simple, a Best Book of 2014
"Such is Mirvis's finesse and insight that she leaves the reader completely sympathetic with each character's dilemmas . . . Visible City is a beautifully rendered novel that takes on art, parenting, betrayal and the nature of love." -- Shelf Awareness
"Mirvis writes tenderly of love and loneliness, chance encounters and tough decisions. She captures the competitive edge of mothers so devoted to their kids' enrichment and, also, their own buried feelings of desperation. With humor, she gets the details right . . . [and] masterfully renders life along upper Broadway and Riverside Park." -- Jewish Week
"By the time she has knitted up all the delicate threads of her story, Mirvis reveals that freedom often involves the acceptance of responsibility, rather than simply casting off the fetters that bind us to daily life. Through Nina's eyes, she offers a radiant vision of her characters' newly discovered liberation and of the infinitely complex, extraordinary city in which that kind of reinvention can come to feel like a possibility every day." -- Bookreporter.com
"Mirvis writes an intimate story about different types of relationships, including those with complete strangers . . . In this story of chance and the temptation of change, Mirvis elicits the reader's sympathy for her characters' conflicting desires." -- Publishers Weekly
"Dark, witty . . . [This] comedy about deceptive appearances evolves into a moving examination of intimacy's limitations." -- Kirkus Reviews
