The Outside World by Tova Mirvis

The trick about writing about the other is to make the foreign familiar and the familiar foreign. So that we can see ourselves in the other, and the other makes us see new things in ourself.

Kind of like when My Big Fat Greek Wedding came and and everyone could relate to it. One of the first things I heard about the movie was, "Well . . . it's about this Greek family and their daughter getting married. But you'd think they were Mormon!" A few days later one of my students was talking about the movie and she said, "It's about this Greek family. But they are just like my family. Except we're Chinese." It was a game I played: seeing how many times I could talk about the movie so more people would say this Greek family was just like their own family. And most people could. Maybe because it's about a single daughter who's getting older and she has adoring parents, relatives with opinions about how to wed her off, and therefore there's conflict and drama. It's pretty universal.

Well Tova Mirvis's The Outside World is about a daughter. Who's getting older. With a meddling family. But they are Orthodox Jewish. It's all about dating and mothers and fathers and religion and faith and finding the right spouse. It's about first dates and bad dates and worse dates. It's about finding a perfect soulmate and then realizing the soulmate isn't so perfect. It's about starting anew and then starting anew again. It's about finding meaning in religion and finding the meaning for yourself.

And Mirvis is a master at what she does. How she writes. The characters she develops. The humor she finds. She shows the human imperfection of people trying to live perfectly---all the while being respectful and non-critical. And she has some great one-liners like "The matriarchs would have made quite a stir in Brooklyn." Classic.

She made me see the foibles in my own life as I try to live religiously. And she made me laugh and laugh with some of her descriptions of dating talk among young women at a all women's school in Jerusalem. Orthodox women, but the conversation is almost word for word what's said in the BYU women's dorms. There I was, set in Jerusalem, and I could have in Provo.

If I were to pick my top 10 bookclub reading suggestions, this would be on the list.

Find a copy. I really think you'll like it. And if you want to compare and contrast, then read Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith, about a young couple in a totally different time and place.

No essay. I promise. Just come back and tell me what you thought.

Kristen C, I think you'll like this one. You'll jive with the voice and the irony. You'll get it.