Friday, November 7 | 10:30 am
Inspired by a true scandal, Tova Mirvis’ latest novel reveals how a contentious divorce spirals into a nightmarish murder case. The book alternates between the aftermath — a murky, anxious present where the victim’s wife, Haley, and daughter, Maya, are in hiding — and the past, rewinding to show how a nice upper-middle-class Florida family became a tabloid headline.
The family at the novel’s center is Jewish, though loosely practicing. The most overtly “Jewish” aspect of the novel may be its overbearing matriarch, Sherry, who is refreshingly portrayed as more than a stereotype or a veneration-tinged punchline akin to the job interview response: “I just work too hard!” — in this case, “I just love too much!”
Instead, We Would Never forces us to look so closely at this kind of smother-love that we cringe. We wince at the neediness, selfishness, and self-delusion fueling it — or, kindlier, at the wounds, as the novel reminds us. Mirvis stirs empathy for her least redeemable characters by alluding to unfillable voids left by upbringings, offering some of her most effective prose (when Sherry becomes an empty nester, the house feels “desiccated”).
Ticket: $10