Lost and Wanted

November 1, 2018

In this third novel (after The Dissident and The Newlyweds), Freudenberger deploys the obscurities of science to untangle a series of interpersonal relationships as intricate as any quadratic equation. Narrator Helen, a theoretical physicist who graduated from Harvard and is now an MIT professor of repute, must ponder her place among those in her orbit when she begins, inexplicably, receiving text and email messages from her recently deceased best friend's telephone. The title suggests the loss of something earnestly desired, though what that need is initially seems unknown even to Helen. But in the end, through the apt analogy of gravity and with her own soul searching, she comes to an ultimate moment of "finding." This work is rich in the vivid detail characteristic of Freudenberger, and the narrator's lofty clarifications of physical concepts, such as gravitational waves and the efforts of Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory scientists to detect them, are balanced by hints of the mundane world Helen inhabits, such as a desk strewn with the detritus of everyday life, including a note reminding her to buy toothpaste. VERDICT Recommended for anyone drawn to contemporary literary and character-driven fiction.--Michael Russo, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge

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Starred review from January 1, 2019
A physicist at MIT receives a text from her dead best friend."In the first few months after Charlie died, I began hearing from her much more frequently," Helen Clapp explains at the outset of Freudenberger's (The Newlyweds, 2012, etc.) third novel. Charlie Boyce and Helen met freshman year at Harvard. Though they were "an upper-middle-class black girl from Brookline"--Charlie--"and a work-study white science nerd from Pasadena"--Helen--their friendship took flight, powered by in-jokes, catchphrases, shared ambitions, and theories about life. After graduation, Charlie moved to LA and became a screenwriter, married a surfer, had a little girl. Helen stayed in Boston and became famous as one of the authors of the Clapp-Jonnal model "for quark gluon plasma as a dual black hole in five-dimensional space-time." She wrote two bestselling science books and gained an endowed chair at MIT; her 7-year-old son, Jack, whose father was an anonymous sperm donor, became the "love of [her] life." As the novel begins, Charlie has just died of lupus. Though they hadn't spoken for over a year, Helen is now receiving texts from Charlie's cellphone, which her husband hasn't been able to find since she died. Strangely, they seem like they could only have been written by...Charlie? Meanwhile, said husband and daughter come to stay with Charlie's parents in Boston; also back in town is Neel Jonnal, Helen's college boyfriend and collaborator, now with a fiancee. Complications ensue, though not the predictable soap-opera ones you'd imagine. Freudenberger is good at explaining physics, but her real genius is in the depiction of relationships. Each one in the novel, whether between adults, adults and children, or among children, is unique, finely calibrated, and real. The title is a line from a poem by W.H. Auden which doesn't fully hit until the end of the book, when it takes on heart-rending poignancy.Brimming with wit and intelligence and devoted to things that matter: life, love, death, and the mysteries of the cosmos.

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Starred review from February 11, 2019
Freudenberger (The Newlyweds) explores the convergence of scientific rationality and spirituality in this stunning portrayal of grief. Helen is an MIT physics professor of some renown—known as much for her accessible science writing as for the theoretical model that bears her name. A single mother by choice, Helen, now in her mid-40s, is shaken to learn of the death of her best friend, Charlie Boyce, a successful screenwriter whom she met when they were undergraduates at Harvard. As Helen grapples with her own regrets about having fallen out of touch with Charlie, she and her seven-year-old son, Jack, become increasingly close with Charlie’s husband and five-year-old daughter, Simmi. The children are desperate for a supernatural connection to the deceased; Helen is skeptical—except for the fact that she continues receiving eerily knowing text messages from Charlie’s cell phone. Like her narrator, Freudenberger resists the impulse to use science solely as metaphor; indeed, readers will learn a great deal about the LIGO project and its Nobel Prize–winning work with cosmic gravitational waves. The integration of ideas from physics sparks in the reader new ways of thinking about the nature of time and existence as well as, on a less cosmic scale, about human relationships. Helen’s journey through grief and understanding illustrates how one person can represent many things to different people at different times, and her story is about grief not only at the loss of her friend but also at the demise of countless possible futures. This is a beautiful and moving novel.

Starred review from December 1, 2018
Physics in Fiction They were roommates at Harvard. Charlie (for Charlotte), artistic, gorgeous, sophisticated, and devoted to acting and French literature, hailed from a distinguished, well-off African American family in Brookline. Style-challenged, awkward, and mathematically gifted Helen was a work-study white science nerd from Pasadena, enthralled by quantum physics. The two ambitious young women grew close in what became primarily a long-distance friendship as Charlie excelled in Hollywood as a screenwriter, and Helen thrived as a prominent physicist at MIT. Both had to overcome sexism, but Charlie also had to contend with sexual harassment and racism. Their paths to motherhood agitated their families. Charlie married Terrence, a California surfer who her parents felt was far beneath her. They had a daughter, Simmi. At 36, Helen chose an anonymous sperm donor and had Jack. As the novel opens, Simmi and Jack are in elementary school, and Charlie is dead. Yet she seems to be calling and texting Helen. There's a fair amount of spookiness in physics, and the language is seductively poetic. Freudenberger (The Newlyweds, 2012) is exceptionally conversant in this heady realm, and her obvious pleasure in physics, including the mind-bending work at such facilities as the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Large Hadron Collider, ensures that Helen is a mesmerizing narrator. Irresistibly forthright about her failings, she is laser-sharp professionally, and her urge to share her enthusiasm has inspired her to write internationally popular trade books. But she is stymied by the mystery of the increasingly unnerving texts sent from Charlie's missing phone and by a tsunami of vivid memories. As space and time curve and bend in electrifying flashbacks, Helen struggles through highly charged encounters with Charlie's grieving and furious parents and traumatized Terrence and Simmi, who have moved to Boston to try to fill the void. Helen and Terrence circle each other warily, but Jack and Simmi bond instantly. And if all the emotional and logistical turmoil isn't enough to distract Helen from her demanding schedule, physicist Neel, with whom she made the great discovery that brought her fame and tenure, and the man we begin to suspect may be her one true love, has also relocated from California. Triumphant over his part in a revolutionary breakthrough, the observation of gravitational waves, he is hoping to team up with Helen again, even as he invites her to his engagement party. As more details emerge about Charlie's suffering and death, about how her loved ones, each so astutely rendered and compelling, attempt to move on, and as Helen's own thwarted desires collide, Freudenberger is spellbinding in her imaginative use of particle physics as a mirror of human entanglement and uncertainty. We do learn about Helen's specialty?five-dimensional space-time and the dynamics of black holes?but Freudenberger is also postulating a profoundly resonant physics of emotions and longings, families and friendship, love and marriage, loss and mourning. As original as this deeply involving, substantial, suspenseful, and psychologically lush novel is, Freudenberger is in good company in her venture into the curious alignments among physics, memory, sorrow, and the fate of consciousness after death. There is precedence in physicist and grandly inventive novelist Alan Lightman's Ghost (2007) and Reunion (2003), while in Einstein's Dreams (1993) and Mr g (2012), Lightman translates quantum theory into keenly visualized alternative realities. In her brainy and glimmering novels, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein unites metaphysics, mathematics,...