Nina's world, now that she is an ex-lawyer and mother of two, is a lonely one. On an ordinary evening, waiting for her husband to come home from work, Nina idly picks up her son's Fisher-Price binoculars and trains them on the apartment across the street. What she sees is a picture of quiet contentment; a couple reading and massaging each other's feet. Another time, in the same living room, she sees a 30-something couple--who are they?--in the throes of passion. She knows something is missing from her life. Is it contentment she wants or passion?
Nina and several other of Tova Mirvis's characters carom off each other, intersecting in amazing ways, some personal and intimate, some more incidentally. Mirvis (The Outside World) takes the reader along as these disparate people start asking questions about what's next in their lives. Can they keep faith with the decisions they made as 20-somethings and stay the professional course through the next decade? Most interestingly, now that one couple approaches their 60s, do any of the same rules apply?
Such is Mirvis's finesse and insight that she makes the reader completely sympathetic to each character's dilemmas. She shows us not just two friends walking, but their illuminated interiors--who they were and who they might be again. What happens when ordinary people begin to weigh the cost of change? Are stability and commitment more desirable than change? Visible City is a beautifully rendered novel that takes on art, parenting, betrayal and the nature of love. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.