'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 ...
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'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.
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Joan Silber's short critically-acclaimed novel "Improvement" (2017) is a story of people and of the frequently surprising consequences of their actions. The book is a tapestry, a metaphor used throughout, of different times and places, including New York City, Turkey, Germany, Virginia, and Philadelphia. The events in the story take place over a time frame of about forty years.
The book includes several sets of characters. The focus is on a young single mother in New York City and her boyfriend who is serving a three month sentence at Riker's Island and who has a larger vision. His scheme to sell cigarettes from Virginia in New York City to avoid the city takes works to have unintended consequences, good and bad, for many others.
The book moves quickly in short, spare, colloquial language with emphasis on the characters' hopes and dreams and, in particular, on their many sexual relationships. Silber offers a portrayal of African American street life. The characters are described in themselves and in their relationships to others, with the consequences of their actions sometimes forseeable and sometimes not.
The book is at its best in its early sections which develop the characters who appear throughout the work. As the story moves along, it involves too many characters and loses something in focus. It is still valuable to see with the characters the effects of their actions and to think about both predictability and chance.
Many people will be reminded in reading this novel of unforeseen effects of their actions upon others. This is an important aspect of life. This book is philosophical in tone in its exploration both of chance and of connectedness. Readers, philosophically inclined or otherwise, will reflect in different ways on the respective roles of connection and chance.
I thought of the current virus epidemic in reading this book as it showed, if a different sense, how lives may change and how people are bound to one another in frequently chance ways. The Rikers Island scenes reminded me of the criminal proceedings involving Harvey Weinstein. Other parts of the story brought to mind events in my own life.
This book is short and somewhat disjointed but it deserves its accolades. It is particular to its characters and yet will speak more broadly to its readers.
