Rating: 
Summary: Sorry, Not Authentic
Review: Tova Mirvis' The Outside World is a touching, brilliantly observed and described portrait of the "centrist" Orthodox world. Living uneasily with one foot in hareidi (fundamentalist) Orthodoxy and the other foot in modern America, Mirvis' characters are always self-conscious about their religious status. Nevertheless, they are all different from each other as human beings. Mirvis gets their voices, their concerns, their humanity just right. She skillfully echoes Judaism's rich cultural heritage as she paints her diverse portraits. One character, for example, is a failed business entrepreneur whose perceptions of the world are reminiscent in certain ways of Sholom Aleichem's hilariously inept Menachem Mendel.
The main plot centers around a young woman who pursues her beloved with all the mystical devotion of the Shulamite in the biblical Song of Songs. She wakes up in the real world, to find her husband an all too fallible human being. Mirvis' great accomplishment here is that she makes us understand and care deeply about each of her characters--the business-overreacher as much as the floundering young couple.
Rating: 
Summary: Inside the marriage house
Review: Tzippy Goldman is longing to be a bride. And her mother, Shayna, wants it even more than her daughter! Unfortunately, things are not progressing as well for Tzippy as they have for many of her fellow Orthodox Jewish friends. At twenty-two she is still unwed and as Tzippy herself laments, "setting up an eighteen-year old is a hobby for people, finding a husband for a twenty-two year old is a national emergency." Thus Tzippy decides to go to Israel for awhile to attend school and at the same time escape the daily pressure from her family and friends. While in Israel she meets an old childhood friend, Brian Miller, and discovers that it is indeed a small, small world where romance is concerned!This is a warm, wonderful and humorous novel about two young adults who find themselves meeting at just the right time and place. However, this does not mean that theirs is a problem-free relationship. Marriage is not just the joining together of two individuals but the merging of two families, especially in the Jewish tradition in which both Tzippy and Brian were raised. They must learn to cope with demands and expectations not only from their own parents but their in-laws as well. I thoroughly enjoyed this story as I love books that deal with Jewish families and traditions. This one is truly a delight!
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