-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
A Memoir
by Tova Mirvis
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 world.
Born 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. After all, to observe was to be accepted and to be accepted was to be loved. She married a man from within the fold and quickly began a family.
But 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. 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. 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. 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.
This is a memoir about what it means to decide to heed your inner compass at long last. 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.
"Hers is a story of grief and rebirth. She is compassionate and judicious in her portrayal of Orthodox Judaism, even as she describes its repressive attitudes toward women; she discusses the diverse Jewish lifestyles, from Hasidic to secular. Her personal journey makes for an introspective and fascinating story." - Publishers Weekly
"[M]oving, inspiring reading. A thoughtful, courageous memoir of family, religion, and self-discovery." - Kirkus
"A soothing picture of personal and religious divorce." - Library Journal
"The respect for intra-Jewish difference that Mirvis models for her children - and for readers - is a precious gift to the Jewish literary world...Beautiful and poignant." - Lilith Magazine
"Tova Mirvis offers a warmly told and searchingly explored story of her divorce from both her first husband and her Orthodox Jewish faith. The intimate view of what it means to live an orthodox life - the day to day reality of following its many guiding rules and principles - is fascinating to an outsider like me, and Tova's insights are both thought-provoking and generous." - Jessica Shattuck, New York Times bestselling author of The Women in the Castle
"The Book of Separation is an elegant, beautiful, carefully drawn story of love, tradition, inner conflict, and loss. This extraordinary memoir resonated with me more than I can say." - Dani Shapiro, bestselling author of Devotion and Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage
"Tova Mirvis perfectly, beautifully, unsettlingly captures the particular horror - existential and otherwise - of dismantling a long marriage and starting one's life anew. This is a heartbreaking, breathtaking, life-altering book." - Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year
"In The Book of Separation, Tova Mirvis brings us into her heart-wrenching decision to leave her marriage and the world of Orthodox Judaism behind. Her exploration of faith and self are truly miraculous. This book is a wonder!" - Ann Hood, author of The Book that Matters Most
"With elegance, rare depth and unflinching honesty, Tova Mirvis offers up a chronicle of one woman's revolution against her own life. The Book of Separation is fiercely inspiring, and illuminates the too often dormant power within all of us to live in accordance with who we truly are." - Heidi Pitlor, author of The Daylight Marriage
"Tova Mirvis's memoir, beautifully written and fiercely honest, is a moving reflection on what it means to take responsibility for one's own life...By staring so unflinchingly into her confusions and fears, a portrait of quiet courage slowly assembles itself, radiating insights and inspiration for all." - Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex
This information about The Book of Separation was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tova Mirvis is the author of three novels: Visible City, The Outside World, and The Ladies Auxiliary, a national bestseller. Her essays have appeared in various publications, including the New York Times, the Boston Globe Magazine, the Huffington Post, and Poets and Writers, and her fiction has been broadcast on NPR. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts.
If you liked The Book of Separation, try these:
by Kate Riley
Published 2026
In this mesmerizing and profound novel, the arc of a woman's life in a devout, insular community challenges our deepest assumptions about what infuses life with meaning.
by Erika J.. Simpson
Published 2026
From "a writer who's absolutely going places" (Roxane Gay), a remarkable, inventive debut memoir about a mother-daughter relationship across cycles of poverty, separation, and illness, exploring how we forge identity in the face of imminent loss.
by Sue Monk Kidd
Published 2021
An extraordinary story set in the first century about a woman who finds her voice and her destiny, from the celebrated number one New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings.
A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas--a place ...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
