Synopses & Reviews
Everyone has secrets. Some we keep to protect ourselves, others we keep to protect those we love.
A devoted city dweller, Cornelia Brown surprised no one more than herself when she was gripped by the sudden, inescapable desire to leave urban life behind and head for an idyllic suburb. Though she knows she and her beloved husband, Teo, have made the right move, she approaches her new life with trepidation and struggles to forge friendships in her new home. Cornelia's mettle is quickly tested by judgmental neighbor Piper Truitt. Perfectly manicured, impeccably dressed, and possessing impossible standards, Piper is the embodiment of everything Cornelia feared she would find in suburbia. A saving grace soon appears in the form of Lake. Over a shared love of literature and old movies, Cornelia develops an instant bond with this warm yet elusive woman who has also recently arrived in town, ostensibly to send her perceptive and brilliant son, Dev, to a school for the gifted.
Marisa de los Santos's literary talents shine in the complex interactions she creates between these three women. She deftly explores the life-altering roller coaster of emotions Piper faces as she cares for two households, her own and that of her cancer-stricken best friend, Elizabeth. Skillfully, de los Santos creates an enigmatic and beguiling character in Lake, who draws Cornelia closer even as she harbors a shocking secret. And from the first page until the exhilarating conclusion, de los Santos engages readers with Cornelia, who, while trying to adapt to her new surroundings, must remain true to herself. As their individual stories unfold, the women become entangled in a web of trust, betrayal, love, andloss that challenges them in ways they never imagined, and that ultimately teaches them what it means for one human being to belong to another.
Review
“In a glittering novel about fate, fantasy, and the anonymity of urban life, a lonely New York City woman uses her son’s toy binoculars to spy on couples whose intimacy she craves.” —
O, The Oprah Magazine “Mirvis’s meticulously choreographed novel surprises and moves us. She shows the city for what it is behind all its windows and walls: a vast constellation of those ‘truthful moments’ her heroine seeks, as numerous as the stars.” — New York Times Book Review
“A complex novel about intersecting lives . . . [that] paints a wry, funny portrait of an Upper West Side in turmoil, where harried mothers endlessly ponder their skills at ‘parenting’ . . . What makes Visible City interesting is Mirvis’s humane, intelligent perception of the emotional lives of her characters.” — Wall Street Journal
“Read Visible City. Mirvis’s graceful yet vigorous New York novel is about the half-inadvertent window-peeping that city life enables, and where it can lead.” — New York Magazine
“Both a paean and a lament for a world contained within one neighborhood . . . [Visible City] brilliantly unfurls connections that overlap and intersect between strangers and lovers . . . Arresting.” — Jewish Daily Forward
“Mirvis won me over with her empathy with her characters, whose inner lives she probes with subtle insight and style in Visible City . . . Achingly well told.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“In this story of three unfulfilled couples living in Manhattan, Mirvis captures a prevalent inner struggle: the desire for change versus the fear of the unknown . . . Through these characters’ feelings of fear, regret, and discontent, I was reminded never to lose sight of what brings me happiness.” — Real Simple, a Best Book of 2014
“Such is Mirvis’s finesse and insight that she leaves the reader completely sympathetic with each character’s dilemmas . . . Visible City is a beautifully rendered novel that takes on art, parenting, betrayal and the nature of love.” — Shelf Awareness
“Mirvis writes tenderly of love and loneliness, chance encounters and tough decisions. She captures the competitive edge of mothers so devoted to their kids’ enrichment and, also, their own buried feelings of desperation. With humor, she gets the details right . . . [and] masterfully renders life along upper Broadway and Riverside Park.” — Jewish Week
“By the time she has knitted up all the delicate threads of her story, Mirvis reveals that freedom often involves the acceptance of responsibility, rather than simply casting off the fetters that bind us to daily life. Through Nina’s eyes, she offers a radiant vision of her characters’ newly discovered liberation and of the infinitely complex, extraordinary city in which that kind of reinvention can come to feel like a possibility every day.” — Bookreporter.com
“Mirvis writes an intimate story about different types of relationships, including those with complete strangers . . . In this story of chance and the temptation of change, Mirvis elicits the reader’s sympathy for her characters’ conflicting desires.” — Publishers Weekly
“Dark, witty . . . [This] comedy about deceptive appearances evolves into a moving examination of intimacy’s limitations.” — Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
Marisa de los Santos s Belong to Me is my favorite discovery of the past years: a terrific page-turner that s also poignant, funny, surprising and deeply heartfelt. Harlan Coben Complex, engaging, and surprisingly moving. Boston Globe
The sensational New York Times bestseller from Marisa de los Santos, Belong to Me is a gift for readers, an enchanting, luminous novel about the accidents, both big and small, that affect our choice of friend, lover, and spouse. A story centered around three very different suburban neighbors and what it truly means to belong to someone, this eye-opening, unforgettable book is the perfect book club selection beautifully written, smart and sophisticated women s fiction that invites discussion as it touches the heart and the ideal companion to de los Santos s previous blockbuster, Love Walked In."
Synopsis
"Marisa de los Santos's Belong to Me is my favorite discovery of the past years: a terrific page-turner that's also poignant, funny, surprising and deeply heartfelt."
--Harlan Coben
"Complex, engaging, and surprisingly moving."
--Boston Globe
The sensational New York Times bestseller from Marisa de los Santos, Belong to Me is a gift for readers, an enchanting, luminous novel about the accidents, both big and small, that affect our choice of friend, lover, and spouse. A story centered around three very different suburban neighbors and what it truly means to "belong" to someone, this eye-opening, unforgettable book is the perfect book club selection--beautifully written, smart and sophisticated women's fiction that invites discussion as it touches the heart--and the ideal companion to de los Santos's previous blockbuster, Love Walked In.
Synopsis
Cornelia Brown surprised herself when she was gripped by the sudden, inescapable desire to move to the suburbs with her husband. Her mettle is quickly tested by her impeccably dressed, overly judgmental neighbor Piper Truitt—the embodiment of everything Cornelia feared she'd find in suburbia. With Lake, another recent arrival, Cornelia shares a love of literature and old movies—as she forms an instant bond with this warm yet elusive woman and her perceptive, brilliant young son Dev.
Acclaimed bestselling author Marisa de los Santos's literary talents shine in the complex interactions she creates between three unforgettable women, deftly entangling her characters in a web of trust, betrayal, love, and loss that challenges them in ways they never imagined.
Synopsis
“Marisa de los Santoss
Belong to Me is my favorite discovery of the past years: a terrific page-turner thats also poignant, funny, surprising and deeply heartfelt.”
—Harlan Coben
“Complex, engaging, and surprisingly moving.”
—
Boston GlobeThe sensational New York Times bestseller from Marisa de los Santos, Belong to Me is a gift for readers, an enchanting, luminous novel about the accidents, both big and small, that affect our choice of friend, lover, and spouse. A story centered around three very different suburban neighbors and what it truly means to “belong” to someone, this eye-opening, unforgettable book is the perfect book club selection—beautifully written, smart and sophisticated womens fiction that invites discussion as it touches the heart—and the ideal companion to de los Santoss previous blockbuster, Love Walked In.
Synopsis
For fans of Meg Wolitzer and Allegra Goodman, an intimate and provocative novel about three couples whose paths intersect in their New York City neighborhood, forcing them all to weigh the comfort of stability against the costs of change
Synopsis
A Real Simple Best Book of 2014“A glittering novel about fate, fantasy, and the anonymity of urban life.” — O, The Oprah Magazine “Mirvis's meticulously choreographed novel surprises and moves us.” — New York Times Book Review
“Graceful yet vigorous.” — New York Magazine
From the window of her Manhattan apartment, Nina spends her evenings watching the older couple across the street. She is drawn to their quiet contentment, so unlike her own lonely, chaotic world of child rearing. One night, through that same window, she spies a young couple in the throes of passion. In the coming weeks, Nina encounters both the older couple and the young lovers on the streets of her neighborhood, and as anonymity gives way to different — and sometimes dangerous — forms of intimacy, Nina and her neighbors each begin to question their own paths.
With a “humane, intelligent perception of the emotional lives of her characters” (Wall Street Journal), Mirvis conjures a New York City teeming with buried treasures, casualties of a metropolis always in flux; not unlike its inhabitants, who must confront their own hidden desires and, eventually, weigh the comforts of stability against the urge for change.
Synopsis
“A glittering novel about fate, fantasy, and the anonymity of urban life.” —O, The Oprah Magazine “Read Visible City. Tova Mirvis’s graceful yet vigorous New York novel is about the half-inadvertent window-peeping that city life enables, and where it can lead.” —New York Magazine
After chaotic days of wrangling and soothing her young children, Nina spends her evenings spying on the quiet, contented older couple across the street. But one night, through her same window, she spies a young couple in the throes of passion. Who are these people, and what happened to her symbol of domestic happiness? Soon, Nina crosses paths with both couples on the streets of her Upper West Side neighborhood and, as anonymity gives way to different forms of intimacy, all begin to confront their own desires and disappointments. Shrewdly and artfully, Mirvis explores the boundaries between our own lives and the lives of others. From its lavish ghost subway stations to its hidden stained-glass windows, Visible City conjures a New York City teeming with buried treasures.
“An utterly perfect, deeply moving evocation of contemporary Manhattan [that] reminded me of Paula Fox and Laurie Colwin, and also those master chroniclers of the privileged classes, Wharton and Fitzgerald . . . Brilliant.” —Joanna Smith Rakoff, Salon.com
“Mirvis’s meticulously choreographed novel surprises and moves us.” —New York Times Book Review
About the Author
TOVA MIRVIS is the author of The Outside World and The Ladies Auxiliary, which was a national bestseller. Her essays have appeared in various anthologies and newspapers including The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, and Poets and Writers, and her fiction has been broadcast on National Public Radio. She has been a Visiting Scholar at The Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center and is a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fiction Fellowship. She lives in Newton, MA with her three children.