Improvement

By Joan Silber

'Improvement is a major work of literature.' - Nick Hornby, The Believer

Reyna knows her relationship with Boyd isn't perfect, yet as she visits him throughout his three-month stint in prison, their bond grows tighter. Kiki, now settled in New York after a journey that took her to Turkey and around the world, admires her niece's spirit but worries that she always picks the wrong man. Little does she know that the otherwise honourable Boyd is pulling Reyna into a scheme which violates his probation. When Reyna ultimately decides to remove herself for the sake of her four-year-old child, her small act of resistance sets into motion a tapestry of events that affect the lives of loved ones and strangers around them.

A novel that examines conviction, connection and the possibility of generosity in the face of loss, Improvement is as intricately woven together as Kiki's beloved Turkish rugs and as colourful as the tattoos decorating Reyna's body, with narrative twists and turns as surprising and unexpected as the lives all around us. The Boston Globe says of Joan Silber 'No other writer can make a few small decisions ripple across the globe, and across time, with more subtlety and power.' Improvement is Silber's most shining achievement yet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Release date: Feb 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781760637262

Reviews for Improvement

[brangwinn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a great novel. Weaving together the stories of three people with the connecting theme of Turkey and rugs, Silber takes us on a journey as different people who have been connected however loosely go about their lives and find happiness.

[josephking6602 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I am unsure what all the hype was about....this was an OK book, not the masterpiece that people were expecting.

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The butterfly effect ably displayed in literary form. We start with an aunt, KiKi, who has had a varied life, but is now living fairly close to her neice, Reyna. Reyna has a young son, but visits her boyfriend who is serving a short term at Rikers. When he gets out, he and his friends, hatch a money making scheme, which if discovered could carry serious penalties. Reyna, in a moment of weakness, makes a decision that she later rescinds. This would have a snowball effect on many lives.A decision made by one, leads to a decision by another, and that decision another, and so on and so on. It was extremely interesting to see how these people, and others besides are affected by one decision. Never really thought of it before, but probably should have. While I didn't particularly like, nor dislike any of these characters, I was very caught up in where this was going, how it would end. Decisions we make have consequences, many times outside of our view. Quite interesting to think about, and of course to read about.Very well written, maybe a cautionary tale for our lives as we live them. Definitely s novel that makes one think. I love the connections here, and found this to be truly novel read.

[nivramkoorb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I had heard about this author and given her listing of well received books I thought I would read her newest. It was written as many books are these days with a linkage among the characters. It traverses time and location. It is well written and each of the characters and their piece in the big picture held my interest. The story eventually comes back to Reyna, a single mom in New York and her aunt Kikki. They are the main characters but the linkage takes us to Turkey, Berlin, etc. There were aspects to the actions of the characters that didn't always ring true for me but the book held my interest and sometime I will read her other books that were nominated for National Book Awards.

[lisapeet · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this—delightful, a little profound but not obsessively so. Actually it made me think of Prezi—remember that, the presentation software that everybody wanted to play with a few years back because they were so sick of Powerpoint, how you could make it swoop in and out and go from macro to micro and back again? I hated Prezi, it made me dizzy. But this book is what Prezi wished it could be. Silber uses these beautiful little declarative sentences to paint a whole mural, and it's just neat how she does it—plus entertaining and very sweet. This is a morally decent novel and god knows we need more of those right now.

[cariola_6 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Silber's newest 'novel' is more of a collection of interconnected stories--a pattern she has used before, most successfully in my favorite work of hers, Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories. Reyna is a young single NYC mother whose current boyfriend, Boyd, is serving time in Rikers Island Prison for petty theft. He follows the straight and narrow for a while after getting out but soon becomes involved in a cigarette smuggling scheme that ends in a tragedy--a tragedy that is indirectly blamed on Reyna. Kiki, Reyna's aunt, has an interesting past. While travelling in Turkey as a young woman, she fell in love with the culture and decided to stay, marrying a rug seller who, due to political upheaval, soon took her from Istanbul to live on a farm--a life for which she was unsuited. She came back to New York after a few years, bringing with her a collection of Turkish rugs. Individual chapters focus on Reyna, Kiki, and Boyd, and also on the friends involved in the cigarette smuggling scheme, including a young man named Claude; his sister Lynette (Boyd's former girlfriend and an eyebrow shaping artist); and Darisse, a hospice worker, who is Claude's latest and last girlfriend. A series of other intriguing characters-- Teddy, a truck driver who can't seem to quit his ex-wife; and three German artifact hunters, Bruno, Dieter, and Steffi, and, years later, Steffi's daughter Monika and her husband Julian--fill in the gaps. Silber does a fine job of playing Six Degrees of Separation while exploring the way that people and events can change our lives forever. As for the title, all of the characters are seeking to improve their lives in some manner, whether it is through a get rich scheme, finding the right man, doing what's best for a child, hiding the past, or making amends.I enjoyed this book and find I am still thinking about it and appreciating new things about it even days after I finished reading it. I would still rank Ideas of Heaven as my favorite by Silber; I liked the way the individual stories there were set in different places and time periods yet all linked by blood and faith. But Improvements is coming in at a close second.

[viviennestrauss · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Story telling at its best. Really enjoyed this.

[sharonstern · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book is well-written, I just didn't care about the characters. Most of them didn't feel real to me or particularly differentiated from each other. This is possibly too subtle a novel for me.

[deeehmm · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really liked the gentleness of the narrative--I'm so tired of muscular prose and feeling jerked here and there by the weird combination currently favored in American fiction of brutal realism and rigorous hitting of plot points. I wasn't entirely convinced of the characters but I appreciated the truths they collectively conveyed about love and conflict.

[technodiabla · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This "novel" is really more a set of short stories loosely tied together by a minor character in one appearing as the main character in the next. They are also thematically related as the characters are essentially making improvements to their lives by making rational decision about relationships. I enjoyed each story and found the writing to be outstanding and characters to be very authentic and well developed. I could see the attempt in the last story to wrap things up and weave the stories together. It didn't really work. Instead I found the ending wanting something more that was just missing. Still a very worthwhile read.

[narshkite · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am the kind of person that wonders about many of the side characters in the books I read. If I am reading nonfiction it is the worst because I will start researching actual people not central to the story, tumbling down Google wormholes, realizing hours in that it is 2:00 am and that I have to work in a few hours. So this book's structure worked for me. There is a central event which impacts many people followed by vignettes featuring many of those minor characters who wee affected. We seeing how their lived were changed by two decisions, each made in an instant, one fateful night. I thought that was very well done, and I found the featured side characters mostly fascinating. In fact the only character I did not find fascinating at all was the main character, Reyna, whose actions set off everything else. I don't think she was a badly drawn character. The character development throughout is excellent. I was impressed with how Silber could give me only tiny slivers of people's lives and yet I as a reader felt I really got to know them. Reyna was well drawn. I see women like her all the time. Reyna is basic. I lost a bit of interest when she was front and center, but she was so interconnected with everyone else that invariably she would start talking or thinking about other characters like Kiki, Lynette, or Boyd, and I would get interested again. In the end reading this was a great pleasure. I will definitely move on to read other Joan Silber. .