Visible City

By: Tova Mirvis

Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert

Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

Nina is a harried young mother who spends her evenings spying on the older couple across the street through her son's binoculars. She is drawn to their quiet contentment - so unlike her own lonely, chaotic world of nursing. One night, she spies a young couple in the throes of passion. Who are these people, and what happened to her symbol of domestic bliss? In the coming weeks, Nina encounters the older couple, Leon and Claudia, their daughter Emma and her her fiancé, and many others on the streets of her Upper West Side neighborhood, eroding the safe distance of her secret vigils. Soon anonymity gives way to different - and sometimes dangerous - forms of intimacy, and Nina and her neighbors each begin to question their own paths.

©2014 Tova Mirvis (P)2014 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Critic reviews

" Visible City reminds us how strangers become intimates and intimates grow estranged. Tova Mirvis writes with passion and unflinching honesty about the small grievances that accumulate until we no longer know the people we love." (Joshua Henkin, author The World Without You )

"With artful tenderness and elegant compassion, Tova Mirvis strips her upscale Manhattanites down to their naked loneliness and longings. Her novel is as jewel-like as the stained glass window by La Farge that some of her characters believe may be hidden out of sight, walled-up inside an apartment building and waiting for the light of day for all its beauty to shine forth. Mirvis supplies the light, and the result is dazzling." (Rebecca Goldstein)

"A fascinating maze of a novel, following the intersecting lives of two New York families as they come together and fall apart. Not only is the novel gorgeously written, it is enormously wise on the subjects of art, ambition, parenting, betrayal, and what it means to take care of the ones you love." (Lauren Grodstein, author of A Friend of the Family)

Often insightful, but 3 star listen

This book presents insight into the dynamic of marriage, however, along the way, I think the author's message becomes muddled and the conclusion rather disappointing. Still, a good read overall, and i give it 3 stars.