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Tova Mirvis

Goodreads Author

Born

in Bethesda, MD, The United States

Website

http://www.tovamirvis.com

Twitter

tovamirvis

Genre

Literature & Fiction, Memoir, Crime

Member Since

November 2013

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I am excited to share that I have a new novel WE WOULD NEVER coming out in February, 2025. This book was inspired by a true crime story that I have followed over the years and could never quite stop thinking about. How, I wondered, could this tragic story - and so many others like it - happen? Not how did the actual crime occur, but how does a family do something so awful? How does a divorce spiral so out of control? While the news supplied me with an endless array of facts, I always came away from my Google searches feeling dissatisfied, my questions unanswered. As a novelist, I relish the way that fiction lets us go inside character's heads and really delve into their inner lives and all the complexities that we might otherwise hover abov I am excited to share that I have a new novel WE WOULD NEVER coming out in February, 2025. This book was inspired by a true crime story that I have followed over the years and could never quite stop thinking about. How, I wondered, could this tragic story - and so many others like it - happen? Not how did the actual crime occur, but how does a family do something so awful? How does a divorce spiral so out of control? While the news supplied me with an endless array of facts, I always came away from my Google searches feeling dissatisfied, my questions unanswered. As a novelist, I relish the way that fiction lets us go inside character's heads and really delve into their inner lives and all the complexities that we might otherwise hover above. And so I felt compelled to use this story as a springboard and turn those questions into a novel. I was interested in exploring how a family comes to do something they would have once believed they never would; how a divorce can escalate out of control; how people can lose sight of their moral compass; how the inability to forgive can have devastating consequences. We WOULD NEVER is a mystery about a murder but it's also about the mysteries of family loyalty and love and betrayal.

A little bit about me: I grew up in the small Jewish community in Memphis, Tennessee, where I felt both what was grounding about being part of a such an enclosed world as well as what was stifling. This became the subject of m first novel, The Ladies Auxiliary. My second novel, The Outside World, is also set in an Orthodox Jewish world, and is about two families whose children marry each other. In that book I wanted to write about the conflict between tradition and modernity, and also about marriage and dreams and belief and doubt. My third novel Visible City began when I moved from New York City to a Boston suburb. I was so homesick for a city I had come to live, and longed for the anonymous intimacy that comes from living among so many strangers. Visible City is about a woman who watches her neighbors from her windows and becomes entangled in their lives.

After these three novels, I wrote a memoir called The Book of Separation. It originated with an essay I wrote in the New York Times about leaving my marriage and my Orthodox Jewish faith. After the piece came out I was flooded with emails from people telling me their own stories of loss and change and it inspired me to write this book. The Book of Separation is about wrestling with doubt, about trying to be the person I was expected to be and about decided to change, when change felt as terrifying as anything I could do.

I live outside of Boston now and have three kids and three step kids. Besides writing, I love to read, run and play with my beloved dog. ...more

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Average rating: 3.64 · 14,016 ratings · 2,248 reviews · 14 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Ladies Auxiliary 3.71 avg rating — 5,553 ratings — published 1999 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	We Would Never 3.41 avg rating — 2,843 ratings — published 2025 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Book of Separation 3.85 avg rating — 1,958 ratings — published 2017 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Outside World 3.72 avg rating — 1,664 ratings — published 2004 — 18 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Visible City 3.23 avg rating — 1,258 ratings — published 2014 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Pretty Bitches: On Being Called Crazy, Angry, Bossy, Frumpy, Feisty, and All the Other Words That Are Used to Undermine Women by Lizzie Skurnick (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Adaora Udoji (Contributor), Afua Hirsch (Contributor) 3.93 avg rating — 740 ratings — published 2020 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Prayers for the Living by Alan Cheuse, Tova Mirvis (Goodreads Author) (Foreword) 3.70 avg rating — 66 ratings — published 2015 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	ILY by Tova Mirvis (Goodreads Author), Fleet Cooper (Reading) 3.29 avg rating — 7 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	We Would Never: A Novel 3.33 avg rating — 3 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Outside World by Tova Mirvis(2013-05-29) by Tova Mirvis (Goodreads Author), Unknown Author 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Tova Mirvis's Blog

Walls, Windows, Doors

Walls, Windows, Doors

For me, writing fiction always begins with curiosity about other people: what are they really thinking but not saying? What does it feel like to live inside someone else’s body?

So often we close off what we are really feeling. There exists for so many of us a shadow inner life that does not align with the outer one. There are so few places where the inner experience – messy, c Read more of this blog post »

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Published on March 27, 2014 09:05

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Need another excuse to treat yourself to a new book this week? We've got you covered with the buzziest new releases of the day, according to early...

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Tova Mirvis answered Karen's question: I just finished your stunning character study driven, newest novel, WE WOULD NEVER, and I can't stop thinking about how sad it was, but remarkably a favorite. I wanted to chat with you more, if that's okay with you. I was going to ask you, if you could recommend anything that you've read besides your research that inspired you to write it the way you did. I think you will love THE FROZEN RIVER? Thank you so much for reading We Would Never! I appreciate it so much. I read a bunch of mysteries and books based on true stories that helped me decide how to write it - I loved Joyce Carol Oates' Black Water and The Perfect Nanny by Leila Leilami. See Full Answer
Jan 14, 2025 09:34AM · 1 like · like
Tova Mirvis voted for Shred Sisters as Readers' Favorite Debut Novel in the Opening Round of the 2024 Goodreads Choice Awards. Cast Your Vote
Nov 14, 2024 06:32AM · like
Tova Mirvis answered Goodreads's question: What books are on your summer reading list this year? I have had a great summer in reading. My favorite book of this summer was The North Woods by Daniel Mason - not a beach read, but definitely a lake in the middle of a forest kind of read. I also loved Last House by Jessica Shattuck. I'm in the middle See Full Answer
Aug 28, 2024 08:43AM · 1 like · like

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Quotes by Tova Mirvis (?)

“She remembered a story she had once heard: a woman had gossiped about her neighbors and later regretted what she said. She went to the rabbi and asked how she might take back her words. He instructed her to take a feather pillow to the top of the highest hill and tear it open, letting the feathers fly every which way. Then, the rabbi said, she should return to him and he would tell her what to do. She did as he said and when she returned, he told her to go outside and gather the feathers. But that's impossible, she cried. They're already scattered all over the village. He looked at her and smiled. The same is true of your words, he said.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Ladies Auxiliary

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“A different son might have been able to say something. A different father might have been able to hear it.”
― Tova Mirvis, We Would Never: A Novel

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“Be good, said this teacher. be good, the community said. Be good, my name reminded me. But could the inside of your mind be made to conform as readily as your body could - your thoughts covered with the equivalent of a long skirt? I knew without needing to be told that an indispensable part of being good was a willingness to hid what you really thought. There was one way to be good and there were infinite ways to be bad.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

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Tova Mirvis’s Followers (345)

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