The Book of Separation

The Book of Separation: A Memoir by Tova Mirvis, 302 pages.
Novelist Mirvis (The Ladies Auxillary, The Outside World and Visible City) recounts her decision to leave the Orthodox community of which she had been a part he entire life and to leave her marriage. She tells us that many people who decide to leave the community do so when they are young, when they first go off on their own, or when they are in college. Mirvis herself grew up in a Modern Orthodox family. Her brother moved to Israel and became a follower of a more Orthodox, Chasidic Rabbi. Her sister led a more adventurous life, but worried that she was still single in her late thirties. Tova married an Orthodox man right after she graduated from Columbia. She was a bit worried that she and Aaron, her future husband, fought all the time, but everyone assured her that this was normal But after years of feeling increasingly confined by her life and the rules that governed everything about it, Mirvis knew that she had to make a big change. As the mother of three children, and as a person who found a lot of her identity in the Orthodox community, Mirvis finds that the big changes she must make, while necessary, are quite traumatic.