Jo Lennon

There's a slight mystery really that attaches to Kiki.

She's this aunt who we initially encounter as someone who comes to babysit Raina's son while she's off visiting Boyd in prison.

And there's this mystery about Kiki's past.

We know that she's lived in Turkey and there are hints about a marriage left behind and that's something that she's always really

drawn a curtain over and skips away from discussing the details of.

What

I sort of dislike those little motifs and tropes as well.

It feels a bit dumb, doesn't it?

But here I completely forgave it because it was so well done.

And this was also, I think, a feature for me of some of the other no-nos that Silber gets away with, which is getting us to really invest in characters like Raina and Kiki and then moving us elsewhere so that we're off spending time with

very different characters altogether.

And ordinarily, I think as readers, that's something that we resist.

We think, oh, I've just gotten really into what's happening over here and now I have to move over there and why should I care?

But in this book, Improvement, actually, that was all so effortless and so well done that it was still surprisingly delightful.

Oh, absolutely.

And I read one review when I was reading online to see what other people had to say.

This one reviewer was complaining a bit, saying, oh, this isn't really a novel.

It's really interlinked short stories.

And I quite understand that.

But as I say, in this case, I think that Silber pulls it off and quite beautifully.