Improvement, Joan Silber
Improvement, Joan Silber
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Improvement

Author: Joan Silber

Narrator: Cassandra Campbell, Adenrele Ojo, Hillary Huber, R. C. Bray, Ramiz Monsef, Kate Reading, various narrators

Unabridged: 6 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/14/2017

Synopsis

One of our most gifted writers of fiction returns with a bold and piercing novel about a young single mother living in New York, her eccentric aunt, and the decisions they make that have unexpected implications for the world around them.Reyna knows her relationship with Boyd isn’t perfect; yet she sees him through a three-month stint at Riker’s Island, their bond growing tighter. Kiki, now settled in the East Village after a youth that took her to Turkey and other far-off places—and loves—around the world, admires her niece’s spirit but worries that motherhood to four-year-old Oliver might complicate a difficult situation. Little does she know that Boyd is pulling Reyna into a smuggling scheme across state lines, violating his probation. When Reyna takes a step back, 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, repayment, and the possibility of generosity in the face of loss, Improvement is as intricately woven together as Kiki’s beloved Turkish rugs, as colorful as the tattoos decorating Reyna’s body, with narrative twists and turns as surprising and unexpected as the lives all around us.

About Joan Silber

Joan Silber is the author of ten books of fiction, including Improvement, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Secrets of Happiness was named a best book of the year by the Washington Post and Kirkus Reviews. Other of her works have been finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award, PEN/Faulkner Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, the National Book Award, and The Story Prize. She lives in New York and has taught at Sarah Lawrence College and in the Warren Wilson MFA degree program.

About Cassandra Campbell

Original bio sent from Cassandra: Cassandra Campbell began doing voice overs as the voice for Calvin Klein’s Italian commercials. This was followed by commercial and documentary recording in both English and Italian. She has recorded many audiobooks and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as an Audie® Award nomination. As an actress and director, she has worked at the Public, the Mint, the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Stagewest, Theatreworks, the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, Millmountain Theatre, the National Shakespeare Company, and the New York Fringe Festival.  

About Adenrele Ojo

Adenrele Ojo is an actress, dancer, and audiobook narrator, winner of over a dozen Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2018. She made her on-screen debut in My Little Girl, starring Jennifer Lopez, and has since starred in several other films. She has also performed extensively with the Philadelphia Dance Company. As the daughter of John E. Allen, Jr., founder and artistic director of Freedom Theatre, the oldest African American theater in Pennsylvania, is no stranger to the stage. In 2010 she performed in the Fountain Theatre’s production of The Ballad of Emmett Till, which won the 2010 LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Best Ensemble. Other plays include August Wilson’s Jitney and Freedom Theatre’s own Black Nativity, where she played Mary.

About Hillary Huber

Hillary Huber is one of the most successful voice talents in Los Angeles. Recent books read for Blackstone Audio include Him, Her, Him Again, the End of Him by Patricia Marx, A Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read, and A Map of Glass by Jane Urquhart.

About R. C. Bray

R. C. Bray is an award-winning audiobook narrator with over 180 titles to his credit. Besides winning five AudioFile Earphones Awards, he won the prestigious Audie Award in 2015 for Best Science Fiction Narration and has been an Audie Award finalist seven times. He has been a finalist for the Voice Arts Award, and in 2014, his narration earned a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award. He is also an accomplished producer and voice-over artist, and his voice can be heard in countless TV and radio commercials.

About Ramiz Monsef

Ramiz Monsef has spent several seasons as a member of Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s acting company, and he is the playwright of OSF’s 2013 production The Unfortunates. He has also appeared onstage in New York and in numerous regional productions.

About Kate Reading

Kate Reading, named an AudioFile Golden Voice, has recorded hundreds of audiobooks across many genres, over a thirty–year plus career and won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration. Among other awards, she has been recognized as an AudioFile Magazine Voice of the Century, Narrator of the Year, Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy, and winner of an Publisher’s Weekly’s Listen-Up Award. She records at her home studio, Madison Productions, Inc., in Maryland.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Katie on October 29, 2019

Like the other of her books I read, Ideas of Heaven, Improvement is a set of interconnected stories. As the title suggests all the characters are striving to improve their lives - as a theme not perhaps terribly ambitious as who isn't trying to do that?! Joan Silber for me is a very accomplished wri......more

Quotes

“Silber’s quietly brilliant novel Improvement weaves an intricate, zigzagging pattern out of the lives of a dozen people, and six well-chosen narrators provide the voices… The multiplicity of voices in this production gives a wonderful aural dimension to the weave of inadvertently interlocked lives.” Washington Post (audio review)

“Six narrators turn a mix of nationalities and genders into a masterful listening experience…The talented narrators switch between various points of view as the listener gets another piece of the puzzle…Each new voice holds the listener’s interest throughout.” AudioFile

“Improvement is so crisp and resonant a novel that it made me forget the chaos of life around me.” Lauren Groff, New York Times bestselling author

“This is a novel of richness and wisdom and huge pleasure…[A] perfectly balanced mix of celebration and wryness.” New York Times

“[Silver is] a master of the compression and dilation of time, what time and nothing else can reveal to people about themselves.” Washington Post

“A yarn about interconnectedness spanning countries, people, and decades…and how differently characters deal with the curve balls life throws at them.” Chicago Review of Books

“Explores big questions with subtlety, humor, and compassion. Improvement is an everyday masterpiece.” Newsday

“Silber’s extraordinary new novel…is kaleidoscopic as it spans decades and stretches from New York to Berlin and Turkey…She raises questions about fate and chance, power and redemption, and, finally, the universal need for connection.” National Book Review

“Her diverse cast of characters never feel anything but authentic, and her prose is both precise on the sentence level and masterly in structure.” Vulture.com

“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.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Awards

  • Indie Next List
  • Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books
  • Washington Post Notable Book
  • Washington Post Best Audiobook
  • Newsday’s Favorite Books of the Year
  • National Book Critics Circle Award
  • PEN/Faulkner Award
  • Vulture.com Pick
  • New York Times Book Review pick
  • New York Times Book Review Notable Book
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