An Enmeshed Jewish Clan Becomes Menacing
Tova Mirvis’s new novel, We Would Never, opens with a murder. It’s Maine, 2019. The narrator watches a video of a woman being told that her ex-husband has been shot at point blank range. In short order, we learn something shocking: the ex-wife watching the video is actually the narrator, Hailey. It’s an intriguing premise, loosely inspired by an actual crime Mirvis read about.
This is the newest, juiciest novel by Mirvis, author of The Visible City and The Book of Separation. Here, the occasional jump forward and look-back from 2019 adds mystery; it takes time for readers to understand why, and how, Hailey landed in rural Maine.
Readers learn the story of Hailey’s upbringing and her ill-fated marriage. Hailey comes from a seemingly tight-knit Jewish family—Sherry and Solomon Marcus, parents of Adam, Nate, and Hailey. Sherry is a hands-on, in-your-face mother, and Solomon is a physician in Boston. They’re not strictly observant but are proud of their Judaism.
Sherry plays a pivotal role in the novel. Her loyalty to her children knows no bounds and increasingly clouds her judgment. Sherry’s character is compelling, while coming close at times to the negative stereotypes of an overbearing Jewish mother. Sherry’s weaknesses and intrusive-ness provoke Hailey’s demanding husband Jonah. He heaps more and more blame upon Sherry in an effort to separate her from Hailey—who is caught between controlling husband and controlling mother.
Sherry also alienates her son Adam such that he will have virtually nothing to do with her or the family. Hailey and her brother Nate, on the other hand, are extremely close. Nate has taken a circuitous path to becoming a physician, eventually joining his father’s practice, and the relationship between Nate and his father is difficult and competitive. Sherry works in their office and knows both more and less than she should about their lives.
Meanwhile Sherry is worried that her husband, Solomon, is not himself. With that, readers understand that all three children and their father are dealing with difficulties that Sherry wants to manage nd fix, but that may actually be beyond her control.
In this way, Mirvis creates a tinderbox. She does an admirable job of portraying Jonah’s psychological abuse, which does its damage by taking up increasing mental space in its victim, Hailey, making her lose her bearings to self-doubt and self-criticism.
Initially, their marriage seems like it could succeed. But under Jonah’s influence, Hailey lets go of her career and succumbs to his demands about how to rear their daughter, Maya. It takes tremendous courage for her to leave her husband, and she pays dearly for it.
After their separation, Jonah’s retribution is shape-shifting and cruel, designed to put a permanent wedge between Maya and her grandmother Sherry, and to keep Hailey bound to his way of life and away from the people who support her—her mother and Nate. Nate’s observation that Hailey can be “funny and relaxed” but that her niceness is due to “her willingness to bend to what others thought,” becomes reality as Hailey and Jonah’s divorce proceedings grow more painful and cringeworthy.
Mirvis keeps her foot on the pedal throughout the escalating conflict. I appreciate that Mirvis has a deep understanding of family complexity, but on the other hand, with such fully-formed characters, I would have loved to see more complex, subtle backstories to show how some of them grew into this version of themselves.
Nevertheless, by the time we do begin to understand why and how Hailey’s ex- husband Jonah meets his death, Mirvis has admirably built the tension. We are left with as many questions as answers. Families are messy, divorces are messy, and most crucial, marital and family love can be supportive and warm—or deeply menacing.
Martha Anne Toll is a book critic and novelist. Her second novel, Duet for One, is out in May 2025.
