Improvement by Joan Silber

I had never heard of this author but was drawn to the book by it's recommendation in the Three Lives Bookstore in the Village.  So I bought it, always wanting to support the local, independent bookstores.  This quote from Kirkus, is pretty much what the "blurb" in the bookstore said about the book:

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.

I'm glad I own the book, because as soon as I finished it, I wanted to start it all over again, with the added insight of having just finished it. I can't explain it....I rarely feel that way about a book, but this one was short and doable.

But alas, Susan Choi's new book, Trust Exercise, is awaiting and I've waited a while to get it from the Library. So, I'll move on with the knowledge that I can go back to Silber's book whenever I want. It's on the shelf.

Good Riddance by Eleanor Lipman

Had a lot of fun reading this light book. Needed something light after Lost and Wanted and this did the trick. Here's what Kirkus says:

Daphne Maritch has no idea why her mother, a popular New Hampshire high school teacher, left her a heavily annotated yearbook for the class of 1968—but she's about to find out whether she wants to or not.
As Lipman's latest comic novel (On Turpentine Lane, 2017, etc.) opens, Daphne is attempting to declutter her apartment according to the principles of a bestselling book: Hold each item to your heart and ask "does this thing inspire joy?" Despite her mother's obsession with the class of '68—she was their teacher and yearbook adviser fresh out of college, then attended their reunions for decades—the answer with regard to their yearbook is a firm no, and she pitches the thing out. Unfortunately, one of the neighbors in her New York apartment building is both a dedicated trash-picker and an aspiring filmmaker. This neighbor lays claim to the yearbook, convinced that she can base a fascinating documentary on research into the fates of this group of 60-somethings. Daphne's belated attempts to derail the project, which seems to have the potential to reveal her dead mother's secrets, lead to all sorts of madcap adventures. She enlists another neighbor, a sexy young TV actor, in her efforts; she takes a trip to this year's reunion with the documentary filmmaker; she desperately tries to insulate her father, erstwhile principal of the same high school, now a widowed dog-walker in Manhattan, from the whole project and its revelations. It's pretty silly, and very contrived, but this author has a black belt in silly contrivance and a faithful horde of fans who are looking for just that. Au courant elements like an investigative podcast serial, the television show Riverdale, and online courses for becoming a chocolatier add a fresh twist to the proceedings.
Lipman's narrative brio keeps things moving at a good clip.

Lost and Wanted by Nell Freudenberger

Love this author. I struggled with the "physics" of the book (the protagonist is a physicist) and I think I missed some of the meaning of that profession in the context of the book. But no matter. Loved it. Reads well, interesting characters.  A great find.
Here's what Kirkus says:

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