The Visible City

As I sit here looking out the window of my home in the suburbs, which is very rural, I see two turkeys running through my yard.  There are no close neighbors that I can see.  But like the characters in Tova Mirvis' book, The Visible City, I still love to speculate about what other people are doing in the privacy of their own lives.  I have come to the understanding during my adult life, that many times what I imagine is not always the truth about another person's life.

Nina is the stereotypical career woman who decides to stay home and raise her young children, three year old Max and his baby sister.  She is confused and lonely, while her husband Jeremy continues his law work with the fancy real estate law firm, she is home folding laundry and going to the park meeting other frustrated stay at home mothers in New York City.

At night Nina can look out her apartment window at the building across the alley and can watch the lives of others in their apartments without them being aware of her existence.  Over a period of time she follows the lives of Leon and Claudia across the way, watching what she interprets as a loving quiet couple at home in the evenings.  One evening she sees a young woman and man arguing and then having sex in the window.  She imagines the scenario that is playing out.  This turns out to be Emma, Leon and Claudia's adult daughter and her fiance having an argument before he goes off on a business trip.

Later Nina's life crosses paths with Leon and Emma.  She discovers that the story she created about their lives is not at all their reality.  Leon is self-centered psychologist and his wife Claudia is an art historian who has been trying to write about stain glass windows.  She is frustrated with her work and is hoping to live through her daughter, encouraging Emma to finish her dissertation.  Emma is losing interest in her work and wants to try something new, but is unsure about letting her parents down.

Just as Nina is searching for meaning in her life, so are all the other characters she encounters.  Her friend and fellow stay at home mom, Wendy, who left a career to raise two children is always trying to show perfection both in her children and herself.  She cannot bear to think that she is not the model mother with two exemplary children.  Nina is constantly feeling inadequate in comparison.

As we read on and all these characters lives start to intersect, the reader can see how not only don't we really know the people around us, but it is really hard to also delve into ourselves and really get to understand who we are, what we want and need.  How rarely we achieve the goals set out for us by our parents and ourselves.

Showing her readers what life is like in New York City, traveling in the subway and the lost subway stops.  Mothers gathering in coffee shops with the children.  The tearing down of historic buildings making way for new skyscrapers, each one taller than the last. Mirvis examines the interesting stain glass windows of  John LaFarge and the hidden subway stops that are left intact underground.
In an interview Tova Mirvis spoke about the stained glass windows as being impenetrable .  You need to shine a light on them to see the full beauty of the window.  Just as people are opaque and you can only see a part of them.

Though there are no direct references really to Judaism in this novel, Tova does say that the characters are Jewish and there was no real decision made to not write a book that was centered around the religion.  "There were Jewish parts that I arrived at along the way – one character was raised Orthodox but no longer is and this leave-taking impacts the choices he makes in the novel. Throughout the book, many of my characters are Jewish, though this isn’t mentioned explicitly. " This novel is a reflection of the author, as have been her other novels.  So that the characters do have some of the qualities and issues that she is facing in her own life.  Tova says in an interview with the Jewish Book Council, " Even in a novel that is ostensibly about other things, where my Jewish identity and interests are less prominent, I feel the Jewish part of myself present here as well. ....My Jewish self has always been inextricable from my writing self."

This is a wonderful character study novel.  You can find yourself in one or more characters and as the reader, on the outside, it is easy to see what the characters themselves are missing as they negotiate through their lives.