Reviews

• “This is the story of people making poor decisions and the consequences that follow,” to quote another Amazon reviewer. I found Reyna a depressing character who—in her immaturity—chooses roads to the least opportunity, who has moments of self-awareness and sparks of conscience. She can’t pick men, but she occasionally (and significant to the story) connects with the consequences of her actions. Kiki, her aunt is, simply, a hippy—rolling through her young and mid-adult life, taking opportunities (good and bad) as they come. She, too, suffers consequences. This isn’t a story that left me feeling good or hopeful for these characters. Disappointingly, the “humor” (as claimed by the book’s review on Amazon) is slim to none. What I give Silbur credit for is her excellent writing in its spareness and clarity. Her style feels deceptively simple, making for an unambiguous story. You won’t find wasted words here or paragraphs full of flowery descriptions (even the descriptive language is lean). Perhaps you could see her characters just as deceivingly simple, but they’re not. They lead lives of struggle and uncertainty. I don’t understand the acclaim by the award-givers for this book, as other reviewers have written. Silbur’s characters in this particular book (my first of Silbur’s) are sad, sometimes pathetic people. I suppose I experienced this book as a character study of lost and found souls. I did change my review from 3 stars to 4. I don’t like the characters or storyline, but that shouldn’t take away from the talent Silbur has with the written word.

• Joan Silber’s insightful and compact novel, Improvement, takes the form of a series of interconnected stories and examines how a decision in one characters life can go on to have such a consequential impact on that of another. Spanning the 1970s to 2012 and providing a snapshot of over a dozen characters the result is a rewarding and gently humorous ensemble of stories in which the ramifications of an external influence alter entire lives. Taking in a series of locations from the state of Virginia to the cities of Berlin and Istanbul, the stories are also connected by the wider theme of people attempting to improve their lot, be it in love or wealth, with each thread originating from an instance of smuggling, whether Turkish antiquities or American cigarettes. The story opens with the first-person narrative of thirty-something Reyna, a white single mother with a four-year-old son, Oliver, living in Harlem with a fondness for meaningful tattoos and an African-American boyfriend, Boyd, who is serving a three month stint in Rikers Island for selling weed. In love with Boyd yet unsure of his own commitment and sincerity, Reyna’s three-hour round trips to visit him coincide with the return of her aunt Kiki to the East Village after eight years living in Turkey. As self-contained Kiki enters Reyna’s life both women come together as adults and Kiki gives her niece a genuine Turkish rug as well as a multitude of pearls of wisdom on the many phases of her life as she recalls men she has loved with a touching spirit of generosity. Despite alarm bells telling Reyna that standing by Boyd has the potential to backfire if his eye wanders or he is led into the criminal pursuits of his cousin and neighbourhood pals upon his release, she stays the course. As open minded Kiki interacts with Reyna’s life the narrative is also punctuated by insights into the decision Kiki made to initially stay in Turkey and throughout her lifetime to date which make her ripe for further exploration. As Boyd’s release brings domestic bliss for Reyna, the criminal pursuits of his buddies, Claude, Wiley, and his cousin, Maxwell, threaten to land him in strife as they orchestrate a plan to smuggle cigarettes interstate from Richmond, Virginia to New York with the differing taxation rates as the profit. As the reader is drawn deeper into their lives this is woven between snippets of Reyna’s travails along with her discoveries and natural curiosity about her aunt’s colourful life. The novel goes on to capture the ripple effects when a car accident on one such smuggling trip in which Reyna reneges on her agreed involvement ends in tragedy and thereby impacts on an unfortunate long haul truck driver and Claude’s newly deserted love interest. As the repercussions shatter Reyna and Boyd’s fragile relationship and send Reyna into hiding from Claude’s vengeful sister, Lynnette, the consequences resound. Making apparent how a perturbation in one life miles away can have far-reaching effects on the lives of many others and introduce chaos into their own lives, Joan Silber’s novel provides a look at cause and consequence in everyday life. Part II sees Reyna’s narrative give way to a series of chapters focusing on the characters whose lives and circumstances are altered by the tragedy of part I, along with Kiki’s many friends and those that are played a part in her life. Whilst some of these characters stories, such as Claude’s devastated new girl, Darise, who is left hanging and aged trucker, Teddy, whose livelihood is placed in jeopardy, are as involving and moving as Reyna and Kiki’s stories, others, such as the trio of German antiquities smugglers (Dieter, Bruno and Steffi) failed to hold the same interest for me. However despite this they are all woven together seamlessly and never feel out of place. As Part III opens with a return to Reyna’s first-person narrative it gives some closure to her residual guilt surrounding the tragic incident of Part I and the result is an opportunity to reflect on an big-hearted and insightful story full of understated life lessons. Silber’s characters, whether likeable or not, leap from the page and she explores them in pared back and uncluttered prose yet manages to capture them perfectly, with even their dialogue ringing true. Everyone of her characters, not just lead protagonists Reyna and Kiki, leave a lasting impression and I was riveted by this study on the ebb and flow of lives all intrinsically connected by the idea of improvement and advancement be it in life, love or happiness. Although the novel may sound a deceptively simple composition, Silber’s brilliance is in making her characters each feel so integral to one another’s stories despite being significant in number and Improvement really is a human testimony to the butterfly effect. A genuine pleasure to read with an understated premise that shows that geography barely matters, Improvement is a sublime look at cause and consequence in our everyday lives. However it is the compelling and credible voice of mixed-up Reyna, who at times demonstrates exceptional maturity to then stumble over the simplest mistake, and inspirational, freewheeling Kiki that hold the entire novel together and make it a success. On the strength of Silber’s prose alone, form her turns of phrase to her perceptive take on lives across races and cultures worldwide, I am very keen to of her work. With thanks to Readers First who provided me with a free copy of this novel in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.

• There were things about this book that I enjoyed very much; the writing is simple but often elegant, and I appreciated that the author attempted to make the characters realistic instead of just going for happy endings and resolutions to each story arc like so many do. Life is messier than that and I think that’s what the author was aiming for. That being said, nearly none of the characters were truly likable. The main character, Reyna, has a young child to whom she seems, at best, indifferent; there are never any tender moments between the two where you see a maternal side to Reyna, nor is there any development of the child’s personality as a character on his own. The other characters are just as shallow and incongruous; there’s never a feeling that you have a good grasp on who anyone really IS or why they do the things they do. It’s possible that the author was trying for human complexity, but with too little time spent developing each character into a whole person, it was a miss for me. I generally enjoy books written as a series of interwoven stories, and this was well-done here in my opinion. This book was worth a read but nothing amazing.

• IMPROVEMENT is a novel, mostly centered in New York, but also Berlin and Turkey, about people trying to improve their lives, despite the small or catastrophic tragedies that changed their position or outlook. The people in Silber’s cast are either related to each other by family; their circumstances; by a generation; or by several degrees of separation. In some instances, they are intimately associated with each other, or acquainted, but at times, it is only a casual or chance agency that is relevant. What IS relevant is that they are ordinary people, relatable, with baggage and common problems—money, relationships, insecurities—that make them so familiar and sympathetic. Reyna and Boyd are a couple; she has a four-year-old, Oliver, from an ex no longer in their lives. Boyd is just out of Rikers for a minor criminal offense, and Reyna is concerned that Boyd wants to go into another life of petty crime with his cousin, Maxwell, and best friend, Claude. She’s not even sure that her and Boyd are meant to be forever. “I was perfectly aware that some part of my life with Boyd was not entirely real, that if you pushed it too hard a whole other feeling would show itself.” Claude’s sister, Lynette, is an adversary of Reyna’s--they have a strained relationship due to Reyna’s suspicion that Lynette wants to hook up with him. Lynette is an aesthetician, talented in brow work, and wants to own her own salon one day. She is confident that she is capable of making it happen. “The point was to ask for strength. Improvement wasn’t coming any other way.” One of her steady clients, Monika, a Berlin transplant to NYC, is an art historian for the Met, and married to a Jewish artist whose career is declining, which is putting a strain on their marriage. Julian has a tense relationship with Monika’s mother, who is ailing and living on the dole in Berlin. He still has assumptions that Germany is crawling with anti-Semitism, especially from Monika’s mother. So he resists the potential to start a career in Berlin, where the art community may be more receptive to his installations. Long ago, unknown to Monika, her mother was a short-term dealer in antiquities, and had briefly met Kiki, Reyna’s aunt, in Istanbul. Aunt Kiki and her braided rugs are like the glue of the story. In some ways, Kiki is closer in degrees of separation to almost everyone, whose choices have a magnifying but subtle effect on the other characters’ personal histories. Silber keeps the narrative focused on the quotidian, the day to day concerns and activities of her characters, and at times they are braided, like Kiki’s rugs, into a larger narrative or whole piece. Kiki was married in 1970 to a Turkish man and lived in Istanbul and in the countryside, at first helping her husband Osman, in rug trading, and then went with him when he went into farming. She returned, divorced, after eight years, and remains an enigmatic but supportive presence in Reyna’s life. Kiki has never remarried, and lives independently in the East Village. There are others who populate the novel, some related by death, denial, tragedy or secret affairs. The connections—lost, found, fragile, refuted, or discarded, go back and forth in time and characters. What they held, and what held them. The mind—able to be two places at once—the truth and the lie, the past and the present. “A person could keep the best of certain private things to herself, so they didn’t fade, and she could lie flat-out…out of loyalty to once was. Nothing could get her to take back the lie; she was glad for what she held on to.” There’s deliverance through the fog and cloud of precarious decisions, even a grand or noble gesture that change perspectives and lives, and allows us to look through the lens of ordinary people at the small but poignant gestures and bits of improvement that grant redemption.

• I enjoyed the book immensely even though the East Coast locations were not of my experience not were the characters the type of people that I have met in my life. But then, isn’t that what a good novel is suppose to do? Open new doors to ideas and experiences that leave you a little more aware of the world as it might be.....somewhere. Very well written with characters that will live in my mind forever.

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