Praise for IMPROVEMENT
“This is a novel of richness and wisdom and huge pleasure . . . [A] perfectly balanced mix of celebration and wryness.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“There’s always room for Joan Silber’s Improvement.”
—Vanity Fair
“You can feel, in those words, how tenderly Silber treats her large cast of men and women, how she deals out small moments of grace even as things go terribly wrong for them. This seems like a good place to bring up Silber’s voice: unshowy and intimate, precise and colloquial, she seems almost to be confiding the novel to us, a worldly wise aunt not unlike Kiki herself. She marshals great feeling in the course of Improvement without making it seem a big deal . . . An everyday masterpiece.”
—Newsday
“Her work generates tension and momentum from the ebbs and flows of individual lives, but also from the unexpected and sometimes unexplained links between them . . . Like the Turkish carpet that drives much of the book’s action, Improvement repeats shapes and motifs, layering them in an intricate pattern that builds into something far more complex than the sum of its parts.”
—RUTH FRANKLIN, The New York Review of Books
“In Silber’s artfully structured new novel, the stories of a multitude of characters ricochet in cunning ways, crossing generations and continents . . . [An] intriguing contemporary chronicle.”
—BBC Culture
“This gorgeously written novel, funny and full of heart, follows several characters in the life of Reyna, a tattooed single mom with a rambunctious son, a boyfriend in Rikers, and a wise aunt who has seen it all. Each chapter tells a story. I loved every one of them.”
—The Seattle Times, Mary Ann Gwinn’s
Favorite Books of 2017
“I love all of Joan Silber’s work for her mastery of character, her ferocious and searching compassion, and her elegant lines that make the mind hum for hours. Improvement is so crisp and resonant a novel that it made me forget the chaos of life around me; a feat for which I’m truly grateful.”
—LAUREN GROFF, author of Fates and Furies
“There is something so refreshing and genuine about this book, coming partly from the bumpy weave of its unpredictable story and partly from its sharply turned yet refreshingly unmannered prose. A winner.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Joan Silber is America’s own Alice Munro. The psychological acuity, the ambition, the breadth of time and space: it’s all there in Improvement, which demonstrates with great poignancy how our small decisions ramify out and touch the lives of people we don’t even know. This book is deep and true and riveting.
—JOSHUA HENKIN, author of The World Without You
“In Improvement, Joan Silber’s skillful new novel, characters suffer from failed romances, moves to distant shores, and death, yet somehow, they manage to find each other in the end, and reconnect in deeply meaningful and satisfying ways. Silber is not only a gorgeous and masterful writer; she is also a wise and knowing one.”
—LILY TUCK, author of The Double Life of Liliane
“More than any writer I know, Joan Silber’s fiction makes sense of the randomness of our connections while honoring the essential mystery that drives our desires. Her sentences are so finely tuned that they miraculously convey her characters’ everyday foibles and ecstatic recognitions at the very same time. Improvement is a searching and profound novel by one of our masters.”
—MARISA SILVER, author of
Little Nothing and Mary Coin
“Subtle, sexy, brilliant in its unexpected connections and soulful generosity, this is an intensely satisfying novel.”
—ANDREA BARRETT, author of
Ship Fever and Archangel
“A new book by Joan Silber is a grand event in American literature. Silber has been creating a unique body of work that, in its immense authority and vision, puts her in the company of Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant. Improvement is a novel that explores love and ambition and the way it entangles, wounds, transforms vibrant characters across New York City, Virginia, Turkey, and Germany. This is a magnificent work about the complexity of human connection, full of remarkable insight and compassion.”
—KAREN E. BENDER, author of Refund,
a finalist for the National Book Award
“Silber weaves together character studies that examine love, money (and how to get it), and the ripple effects of choices made. Silber’s decision to write events of great magnitude from everyday points of view lends realism and universality to her story. Fans of character-driven, literary fiction should be on the lookout for Improvement.”
—Booklist
ALSO BY JOAN SILBER
FICTION
Fools
The Size of the World
Ideas of Heaven
Lucky Us
In My Other Life
In the City
Household Words
NONFICTION
The Art of Time in Fiction
Copyright © 2017 by Joan Silber
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Names: Silber, Joan, author.
Title: Improvement / Joan Silber.
Description: Berkeley, CA : Counterpoint Press, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017025010 | ISBN 9781619029606 | eISBN 9781619029712
Classification: LCC PS3569.I414 I46 2017 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017025010
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-64009-113-9
Cover design by Nicole Caputo
Book design by Wah-Ming Chang
COUNTERPOINT
2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318
Berkeley, CA 94710
Printed in the United States of America
Distributed by Publishers Group West
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For Myra,
with great thanks
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