Improvement

Starred review from September 1, 2017
Love and profit, fear and orneriness, intention and accident...all present and accounted for in this study of why our lives turn out the way they do."Everyone knows this can happen. People travel and they find places they like so much they think they've risen to their best selves just by being there." So begins this kaleidoscopic story cycle, stretching from 1970 to the present, from Rikers Island and Richmond, Virginia, to Sultanahmet, Turkey, and Berlin. With a group of characters woven together by a butterfly-effect chain of decisions, accidents, and consequences, Silber (Fools, 2013, etc.) examines the dynamics of relationships across races and cultures, the ramifications of smuggling both American cigarettes and European antiquities, the need to find and honor family, and the intentions to sell a Turkish rug, to start one's own eyebrow-grooming business, to somehow make right things that have gone very wrong. Practically every page contains some insight you want to linger over. For example, a truck driver who has just been in a very bad wreck considers his past brushes with death: "Once when he took a beautiful drunken walk across a frozen pond and midway the ice cracked and broke. Once when he was in a car with a woman who drove them off the road into a gully. Once when he was in a fight with a guy who was crazier than he seemed. He'd had a good time when he was young, but in certain respects youth was overrated." Or, a young single mother considering her boyfriend's release from Rikers: "Jail doesn't always change people in good ways, but in Boyd's case it made him quieter and less apt to throw his weight around." 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.

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September 25, 2017
In her far-ranging latest, Silber (Fools) delivers a whirlwind narrative reminiscent of her compact story collections in novel form, with mixed results. Told in three parts and jumping back and forth from the 1970s to 2012, the multipronged story drops in on the lives of loosely connected individuals, all trying (and mostly failing) to improve their lot in some way. Reyna, a white single mother living in Harlem, is torn between staying loyal to her African-American boyfriend Boyd (after his three-month sentence at Rikers Island for selling weed) and getting more deeply involved in the interstate cigarette smuggling scheme Boyd hatched with his cousin and pals. When she pulls out of a smuggling run at the last minute, her decision sets off a chain reaction with dire consequences for one of Boyd’s friends, his love interest left stranded in another state, and a truck driver. Add to that the backstory of Reyna’s great-aunt Kiki’s marriage to a Turkish rug seller turned farmer, the tangential stories of three German antiquities smugglers who stop by Kiki’s farm for a night and leave a lasting impression, and a jump forward 30 years to find one of the German smugglers in the hospital dying of heart disease. With so many characters, it’s a lot of ground to cover in little space, and some of the subplots lack the depth needed to make this a fully cohesive ensemble novel.

November 1, 2017

As with her previous book, Fools, Silber's new novel is a collection of interconnected stories, in which the connections are not always initially apparent. The work opens from the perspective of Reyna, a young single mother in New York City whose African American boyfriend is doing time at Rikers. The narrative then passes to her Aunt Kiki, now a seemingly staid older woman living alone in the East Village, and recounts her youthful adventurous in Turkey, where she abandoned her middle-class Jewish existence to marry a Turkish rug salesman in Istanbul and later moved to his family's remote farm in rural Cappadocia. Later chapters move to members of Reyna's circle, those affected when her newly released boyfriend's Virginia-to-New York cigarette smuggling scheme goes awry, the German antiquities smugglers that Aunt Kiki meets in Turkey in the 1970s, and the adult daughter of two of the Germans in the present day. VERDICT The subtle ripple effects of individual choices and actions are eloquently portrayed through Silber's penetrating eye in this elegant and thought-provoking novel.--Lauren Gilbert, Sachem P.L., Holbrook, NY

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2017
In Silber's (Fools, 2013) latest, big events in characters' lives play out on a small stage in quiet and reflective ways. Reyna is concerned about the cigarette-smuggling scheme that her boyfriend, Boyd, is engaged in, since it involves crossing state lineswhich violates his parole. Her eccentric aunt, Kiki, who lived in Turkey for an extended period of time in the seventies, believes Boyd to be another mistake in a long line of men. When Reyna refuses to be a part of Boyd's scheme, the unintended consequences are far-reaching. Peeking into the lives of people momentarily connected to Reyna in New York City and Kiki in Turkey, 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 magnitudefrom everyday points of view lends realism and universality to her story. Fans of character-driven, literary fiction should be on the lookout for Improvement.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)