movingly conveys the heartache that accompanies the abandonment of one way of life in search of another.” - New York Times Book Review, An Editors' Choice 'In this poignant memoir, Mirvis chronicles her decision, at 40, to finally listen to the voice in her head telling her to leave her religion, her marriage, and her family. Beautiful and poignant.' - Lilith Magazine “An intimate tale of departure….

With The Book of Separation: A Memoir, Mirvis shifts genres, reveals some of the autobiographical germs of her fiction, and compellingly chronicles the process of separating from Orthodoxy.The respect for intra-Jewish difference that Mirvis models for her children-and for readers-is a precious gift to the Jewish literary world. To free the part of yourself that has been suppressed, even if it means walking away from the only life you’ve ever known. Honest and courageous, Tova takes us through her first year outside her marriage and community as she learns to silence her fears and seek adventure on her own path to happiness.Ī New York Times Editors' Choice Featured on the New York Times Paperback Row One of Jewish Week's 'Books To Read This Fall' 'Tova Mirvis has already established herself as a first-rate novelist with The Ladies Auxiliary, The Outside World, and Visible City. This is a memoir about what it means to decide to heed your inner compass at long last. This will mean forging a new way of life not just for herself, but for her children, who are struggling with what the divorce and her new status as “not Orthodox” mean for them. After years of trying to silence the voice inside her that said she did not agree, did not fit in, did not believe, she strikes out on her own to discover what she does believe and who she really is. Even though it would mean the loss of her friends, her community, and possibly even her family, Tova decides to leave her husband and her faith. She married a man from within the fold and quickly began a family.īut over the years, her doubts became noisier than her faith, and at age forty she could no longer breathe in what had become a suffocating existence. After all, to observe was to be accepted and to be accepted was to be loved. The memoir of a woman who leaves her faith and her marriage and sets out to navigate the terrifying, liberating terrain of a newly mapless worldīorn and raised in a tight-knit Orthodox Jewish family, Tova Mirvis committed herself to observing the rules and rituals prescribed by this way of life.

The book of separation by tova mirvis