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Lost and Wanted
An emotionally engaging, suspenseful new novel from the best-selling author, told in the voice of a renowned physicist: an exploration of female friendship, romantic love, and parenthood--bonds that show their power in surprising ways.
Helen Clapp's breakthrough work on black holes in five-dimensional spacetime landed her a tenured professorship at MIT; her popular books explain physics in plain terms. Helen is skeptical, even contemptuous, of anything remotely pseudo-scientific. So it's particularly vexing when, early one morning, she gets a phone call from a friend who has just died.
The friend is Charlie Boyce, Helen's roommate at Harvard, who turned away from a potentially brilliant life in academia for a career in TV writing in Los Angeles, in part because of the unwanted attention she received from a star professor. Charlie and Helen would confide in each other about their children; about their respective careers in boys' club professions, and, in Charlie's case, in an industry that pigeonholed her because she was black. But as the years passed, Charlie became more elusive; her calls came less and less often. She became ill. And now she is permanently, tragically gone.
As Helen is drawn back into Charlie's orbit, and into the feelings she once had for a scientific competitor on the verge of a Nobel Prize-winning discovery, she is forced to question the laws of the universe that always steadied her mind and heart.
Funny, wise, sharply perceptive, taking us from the storied campuses of Cambridge to Hollywood and back, Lost and Wanted is a moving story of friends and lovers, lost and found, at the most defining moments of their lives.
Helen Clapp's breakthrough work on black holes in five-dimensional spacetime landed her a tenured professorship at MIT; her popular books explain physics in plain terms. Helen is skeptical, even contemptuous, of anything remotely pseudo-scientific. So it's particularly vexing when, early one morning, she gets a phone call from a friend who has just died.
The friend is Charlie Boyce, Helen's roommate at Harvard, who turned away from a potentially brilliant life in academia for a career in TV writing in Los Angeles, in part because of the unwanted attention she received from a star professor. Charlie and Helen would confide in each other about their children; about their respective careers in boys' club professions, and, in Charlie's case, in an industry that pigeonholed her because she was black. But as the years passed, Charlie became more elusive; her calls came less and less often. She became ill. And now she is permanently, tragically gone.
As Helen is drawn back into Charlie's orbit, and into the feelings she once had for a scientific competitor on the verge of a Nobel Prize-winning discovery, she is forced to question the laws of the universe that always steadied her mind and heart.
Funny, wise, sharply perceptive, taking us from the storied campuses of Cambridge to Hollywood and back, Lost and Wanted is a moving story of friends and lovers, lost and found, at the most defining moments of their lives.
336 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 2, 2019
691 people are currently reading
17119 people want to read
About the author
Nell Freudenberger
15 books390 followersNell Freudenberger is the author of the novel The Dissident and the story collection Lucky Girls, winner of the PEN/Malamud Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; both books were New York Times Book Review Notables. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship from the New York Public Library, she was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists and one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40.” She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,001 reviews
May 2, 2019
Audiobook... narrated by Ann Marie Lee.
The beginning of this book was like fireworks that starts with a bang...then fizzles down fast to a warm heat.
“In the first few months after Charlie died, I began hearing from her much more frequently”, is the opening sentence.
I was anxious to get some more details and answers about that first sentence....but it’s a long time coming.
We don’t really feel it’s power until the end of the book.
But the storytelling takes off ....and ‘mostly’ I enjoyed the ride.
Nell’s Physics research - The Black Hole - and spacetime -is scrupulous and winningly presented....but her strength shines through her characters: exploring friendships - disconnected relationships-lovers- loss- death - family - single partnering - and the children. The kids are funny.
The character, Helen Clapp, is single mother by choice from an egg donor.
She’s is a scientist with a sense of humor....but her best long time friend - old college roommate from Harvard- is dead. Memories and regret surface.
Universal themes are explored...love, life, loss, death, regret, family, children, single parenting, the afterlife, change, longing, and hope.
Relationships shine as being the heartbeat of life.
It’s incredibly researched, written for mainstream - non science buffs - (thoughts about the universe)...but it’s the deeper look at emotional loss stemming from a friend’s death, that was most affecting.
3.5 rating.
The beginning of this book was like fireworks that starts with a bang...then fizzles down fast to a warm heat.
“In the first few months after Charlie died, I began hearing from her much more frequently”, is the opening sentence.
I was anxious to get some more details and answers about that first sentence....but it’s a long time coming.
We don’t really feel it’s power until the end of the book.
But the storytelling takes off ....and ‘mostly’ I enjoyed the ride.
Nell’s Physics research - The Black Hole - and spacetime -is scrupulous and winningly presented....but her strength shines through her characters: exploring friendships - disconnected relationships-lovers- loss- death - family - single partnering - and the children. The kids are funny.
The character, Helen Clapp, is single mother by choice from an egg donor.
She’s is a scientist with a sense of humor....but her best long time friend - old college roommate from Harvard- is dead. Memories and regret surface.
Universal themes are explored...love, life, loss, death, regret, family, children, single parenting, the afterlife, change, longing, and hope.
Relationships shine as being the heartbeat of life.
It’s incredibly researched, written for mainstream - non science buffs - (thoughts about the universe)...but it’s the deeper look at emotional loss stemming from a friend’s death, that was most affecting.
3.5 rating.
December 4, 2018
Physics is about the study of forces, our protagonist Helen tells us in this book. More than anything else, this book is about the power of the forces we exert upon one another that can last long after a person is actually gone.
We have a tendency to think of science as certainty, as things that are known and set and certain. But if you're looking at modern physics, it's not like that at all. There's so much we cannot see, the giant but invisible effects of gravity with massive bodies like planets and black holes, the unpredictable nature of the tiny particles that make up the world. If there is any part of science that gives us the possibility for things that are not what they seem, for a new understanding of life, it's physics. And here Freudenberger uses that to excellent effect to create a sense of a scientific world that is also an unknowable one. When one black hole collides with another, the evidence can be found light years away, and by the end of the book it doesn't feel all that different from the forces that come from the attraction and collision between two people.
Helen is a physicist of significant prominence. Charlie was her college roommate. Over the years they grew apart, living on opposite coasts, building separate lives. But Charlie's death, while she's still quite young from complications from lupus, has a profound impact on Helen. She spends a lot of time thinking about the years she and Charlie spent together. She befriends Charlie's bereaved husband and daughter. And she starts getting messages on her phone from Charlie, though Charlie's phone has been missing since her death.
This is not a mystery or a ghost story. Sometimes I think it's important to know as little as possible about a book but here I worry that it will get sold as something that it isn't. The mystery of Charlie's messages is part of the story but not central to it, and if you get too wrapped up in that you can miss the beautiful book that's happening along the way. Helen and Charlie were very close but often very different and part of Helen's journey through her grief is reexamining and reevaluating her relationship with Charlie. Charlie is black, well-off, from east coast private school; Helen is white, middle-class, from west coast public school. There is a lot they do not understand about each other, their friendship was impossible to predict, and yet it works.
Charlie is a force of charisma, talent, and ambition. But this is not one of those books where the protagonist is a cipher drawn to a magnetic person. Helen is her own person, eccentric, often isolated, a single parent by choice. I enjoyed spending time with Helen, I enjoyed how she saw physics in everything and how she didn't see herself as above laymen. Helen takes joy in explaining some of the most complex ideas in physics to her 7-year-old son (and us readers) and does so quite well. Helen misses Charlie and she also spends a lot of time thinking about the other major person in her life from that time who's also more distant--her first collaborator and former lover Neel.
This is not one of those books where a scientist has their whole worldview fall apart from mysteries they can't explain. Helen is open to paradoxes and mysteries, she's willing to consider things that seem impossible. She lives in a world where we actually measure the ripples in space-time, what more is it to imagine that there is something more to human consciousness?
This book was a real joy to read, a character study of not just Helen but everyone around her. Everyone felt real and complex, especially the two children who were particularly well-drawn, eccentric and sulky little weirdos. I have a soft spot for books about women in science, it's still a rare subject, and this holds its own with some of my other favorites--CHEMISTRY by Weike Wang and INTUITION by Allegra Goodman. Freudenberger has clearly done extensive scientific research and it shows, but the book doesn't feel hard to grasp. This type of character is often prickly and excessively eccentric, but Helen isn't the kind of person who sees herself as better than everyone else, she's just made a home for herself in her life and Charlie's death doesn't turn her into a more open person, but it does force her to crack open her contained life in interesting ways. I've read some Freudenberger before and enjoyed it but it really feels like she's come into her own here. The way she brings together big questions of science with the small intimacies of love and friendship is masterful.
We have a tendency to think of science as certainty, as things that are known and set and certain. But if you're looking at modern physics, it's not like that at all. There's so much we cannot see, the giant but invisible effects of gravity with massive bodies like planets and black holes, the unpredictable nature of the tiny particles that make up the world. If there is any part of science that gives us the possibility for things that are not what they seem, for a new understanding of life, it's physics. And here Freudenberger uses that to excellent effect to create a sense of a scientific world that is also an unknowable one. When one black hole collides with another, the evidence can be found light years away, and by the end of the book it doesn't feel all that different from the forces that come from the attraction and collision between two people.
Helen is a physicist of significant prominence. Charlie was her college roommate. Over the years they grew apart, living on opposite coasts, building separate lives. But Charlie's death, while she's still quite young from complications from lupus, has a profound impact on Helen. She spends a lot of time thinking about the years she and Charlie spent together. She befriends Charlie's bereaved husband and daughter. And she starts getting messages on her phone from Charlie, though Charlie's phone has been missing since her death.
This is not a mystery or a ghost story. Sometimes I think it's important to know as little as possible about a book but here I worry that it will get sold as something that it isn't. The mystery of Charlie's messages is part of the story but not central to it, and if you get too wrapped up in that you can miss the beautiful book that's happening along the way. Helen and Charlie were very close but often very different and part of Helen's journey through her grief is reexamining and reevaluating her relationship with Charlie. Charlie is black, well-off, from east coast private school; Helen is white, middle-class, from west coast public school. There is a lot they do not understand about each other, their friendship was impossible to predict, and yet it works.
Charlie is a force of charisma, talent, and ambition. But this is not one of those books where the protagonist is a cipher drawn to a magnetic person. Helen is her own person, eccentric, often isolated, a single parent by choice. I enjoyed spending time with Helen, I enjoyed how she saw physics in everything and how she didn't see herself as above laymen. Helen takes joy in explaining some of the most complex ideas in physics to her 7-year-old son (and us readers) and does so quite well. Helen misses Charlie and she also spends a lot of time thinking about the other major person in her life from that time who's also more distant--her first collaborator and former lover Neel.
This is not one of those books where a scientist has their whole worldview fall apart from mysteries they can't explain. Helen is open to paradoxes and mysteries, she's willing to consider things that seem impossible. She lives in a world where we actually measure the ripples in space-time, what more is it to imagine that there is something more to human consciousness?
This book was a real joy to read, a character study of not just Helen but everyone around her. Everyone felt real and complex, especially the two children who were particularly well-drawn, eccentric and sulky little weirdos. I have a soft spot for books about women in science, it's still a rare subject, and this holds its own with some of my other favorites--CHEMISTRY by Weike Wang and INTUITION by Allegra Goodman. Freudenberger has clearly done extensive scientific research and it shows, but the book doesn't feel hard to grasp. This type of character is often prickly and excessively eccentric, but Helen isn't the kind of person who sees herself as better than everyone else, she's just made a home for herself in her life and Charlie's death doesn't turn her into a more open person, but it does force her to crack open her contained life in interesting ways. I've read some Freudenberger before and enjoyed it but it really feels like she's come into her own here. The way she brings together big questions of science with the small intimacies of love and friendship is masterful.
June 6, 2019
This book was SLOW, drawn out and seemingly didn't have a plot. There is way too much science in the book to the point where I started skimming over large chunks because I don't have a PhD in physics and you need one to understand this (ironically, though, the main character Helen supposedly writes books to make physics understandable for the average person).
There was no plot, and trying to get through over 300 plot-less pages is just brutal. The character interactions were interesting, but they didn't seem to go anywhere. The book literally just ended, to the point where I was swiping to figure out what I missed. After going on and on, the end was so abrupt it was pretty much in the middle of a scene.
I thought this book would be interesting, and I don't mind a little science tossed in, but this seemed like an author who had a great deal of physics knowledge and tried to write a fiction book with it. Overall, it didn't work for me.
Thank you to the FirstToRead program for an advanced review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
There was no plot, and trying to get through over 300 plot-less pages is just brutal. The character interactions were interesting, but they didn't seem to go anywhere. The book literally just ended, to the point where I was swiping to figure out what I missed. After going on and on, the end was so abrupt it was pretty much in the middle of a scene.
I thought this book would be interesting, and I don't mind a little science tossed in, but this seemed like an author who had a great deal of physics knowledge and tried to write a fiction book with it. Overall, it didn't work for me.
Thank you to the FirstToRead program for an advanced review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Read
April 1, 2019Why I love it
by Siobhan Jones
Before we get into everything that makes this book so great, our editorial team wants to be clear on one thing: Lost and Wanted is a very challenging, occasionally slow-going literary work that won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s also quite brilliant but, well, you’ve been warned.
The story follows Helen Clapp, a physicist and single mom whose work on astrophysics has garnered her tenure at MIT, a handful of book deals, and … perhaps fewer close relationships than she had anticipated. So she’s surprised when she receives a text from Charlie, her enigmatic best friend from college with whom she’s fallen out of touch. Surprised, also, because Charlie has recently passed away.
Where is this going? Not where you think. Lost and Wanted is a complex book, and its many storylines function less as plot points than as wormholes to a web of fascinating cerebral digressions. You get the sense that the narrator, Helen, wants to both tell the story and keep the reader at a distance—and all that space (no pun intended) provides ample room for your own imagination to rush in. A great book for an afternoon of mind expansion, this is a read for those reaching for the stars.
Read more at: https://bookofthemonth.com/lost-and-w...
by Siobhan Jones
Before we get into everything that makes this book so great, our editorial team wants to be clear on one thing: Lost and Wanted is a very challenging, occasionally slow-going literary work that won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s also quite brilliant but, well, you’ve been warned.
The story follows Helen Clapp, a physicist and single mom whose work on astrophysics has garnered her tenure at MIT, a handful of book deals, and … perhaps fewer close relationships than she had anticipated. So she’s surprised when she receives a text from Charlie, her enigmatic best friend from college with whom she’s fallen out of touch. Surprised, also, because Charlie has recently passed away.
Where is this going? Not where you think. Lost and Wanted is a complex book, and its many storylines function less as plot points than as wormholes to a web of fascinating cerebral digressions. You get the sense that the narrator, Helen, wants to both tell the story and keep the reader at a distance—and all that space (no pun intended) provides ample room for your own imagination to rush in. A great book for an afternoon of mind expansion, this is a read for those reaching for the stars.
Read more at: https://bookofthemonth.com/lost-and-w...
September 15, 2023
Very slow and also nearly perfect. If you are looking for action and convoluted plotting this is not the book for you. Or if reading about the Math minded or science nerd thought patterns can't be categorized in your own "exciting"? Then I would give this one a wide pass.
This book is simply the best woman to woman friendship capture that I've read in many years. Helen and Charlie- I will remember you. Also the most unique "eyes" female entwined book since Mathematician's Shiva. Complications of friendships and cognition of loss- this is a thesis.
This is also about that age between 40 and 50 years when you are in the midst of life and career. Oftentimes the competing pulls of obligation, affection, dedication and just plain stopping to breathe and sleep and live healthfully, economically in a sound best mode are all hard to pull together. And nearly never with optimal joy at the same time. It's about workmates and peers too and parental "eyes" of observed child habits. And most of all about omissions of contact or secrets of sorrows that we are apt to hide from our very closest.
You read so many young coming of age and 20 something books in our present collections. And multitudes of the old and retiring backwards contemplative. But this "in the middle" state is rare, IMHO. And done this well without the midlife crisis comet in sight! Next to a miracle.
I'll be reading Freudenberger of the future. For sure. I looked at her photo for a full minute after I turned the last page. She's SO young. And yet she is wise.
If you love Science. If the biggest and the smallest of Physics in detail can begin a twist in your neurons to become imaginable! Then this read is your plum. It's like the Higgs effect too. It made me remember the void- the space "between" that remains forever empty. For it is always missing my most beloved friend.
This book is simply the best woman to woman friendship capture that I've read in many years. Helen and Charlie- I will remember you. Also the most unique "eyes" female entwined book since Mathematician's Shiva. Complications of friendships and cognition of loss- this is a thesis.
This is also about that age between 40 and 50 years when you are in the midst of life and career. Oftentimes the competing pulls of obligation, affection, dedication and just plain stopping to breathe and sleep and live healthfully, economically in a sound best mode are all hard to pull together. And nearly never with optimal joy at the same time. It's about workmates and peers too and parental "eyes" of observed child habits. And most of all about omissions of contact or secrets of sorrows that we are apt to hide from our very closest.
You read so many young coming of age and 20 something books in our present collections. And multitudes of the old and retiring backwards contemplative. But this "in the middle" state is rare, IMHO. And done this well without the midlife crisis comet in sight! Next to a miracle.
I'll be reading Freudenberger of the future. For sure. I looked at her photo for a full minute after I turned the last page. She's SO young. And yet she is wise.
If you love Science. If the biggest and the smallest of Physics in detail can begin a twist in your neurons to become imaginable! Then this read is your plum. It's like the Higgs effect too. It made me remember the void- the space "between" that remains forever empty. For it is always missing my most beloved friend.
May 20, 2019
[4+] Most of the action in this book happens in Helen's head, so I can see why some reviewers call it slow. I couldn't put it down. Helen is one of the most fascinating, complex characters I've encountered in fiction. She is a mother, a scientist, a grieving friend. She has chosen her life as a single mother, yet yearns for connections. Along with Helen, I felt the world opening for me as I turned the pages. This is an expansive, profound novel.
May 27, 2019
Elegant and knowing. Will gently lead you to root for the existence of ghosts.
When I call you up your line's engaged
This is that rare non-depressing book about grief-stricken characters. The writing is uniformly excellent, the characters are people worth knowing.
The novel's narrator, Helen, reminded me of the speaker of Irving's Prayer for Owen Meany (who dismisses his own role in the narrative as "just a Joseph.") Both are reserved, self-deprecating, mourning the loss of a hero and a greater glory that's passed from the world. (Not a spoiler for Lost and Wanted, and you should already know Meany, it's been out for thirty years.)
The only drawback is that if you're not careful, you'll learn more than you ever wanted to know about particle physics. (Me, I skimmed those passages.)
The characters are Ivy Leaguers, self-made upper-crust, academics, and surfers, a pretty rarefied-air group, but there's hardly an ounce of snobbery.
Extra points for especially inventive and thoughtful use of cell phone as plot device.
3 1/2 stars, rounded up. YMMV.
keywords: Of course we blame you for our daughter's death, you wastrel scoundrel surfer; one more terribly precocious kid; shut up and kiss me, you fool; pahk the cah in the Hahvahd yahd; so that's what happened to the SuperCollider, I always wondered; L.A. was a death sentence for her and it's all your fault, you undergraduate-inveigling fool; I'm probably not as desperate as I seem; Mama told me not to come
When I call you up your line's engaged
This is that rare non-depressing book about grief-stricken characters. The writing is uniformly excellent, the characters are people worth knowing.
The novel's narrator, Helen, reminded me of the speaker of Irving's Prayer for Owen Meany (who dismisses his own role in the narrative as "just a Joseph.") Both are reserved, self-deprecating, mourning the loss of a hero and a greater glory that's passed from the world. (Not a spoiler for Lost and Wanted, and you should already know Meany, it's been out for thirty years.)
The only drawback is that if you're not careful, you'll learn more than you ever wanted to know about particle physics. (Me, I skimmed those passages.)
The characters are Ivy Leaguers, self-made upper-crust, academics, and surfers, a pretty rarefied-air group, but there's hardly an ounce of snobbery.
Extra points for especially inventive and thoughtful use of cell phone as plot device.
3 1/2 stars, rounded up. YMMV.
keywords: Of course we blame you for our daughter's death, you wastrel scoundrel surfer; one more terribly precocious kid; shut up and kiss me, you fool; pahk the cah in the Hahvahd yahd; so that's what happened to the SuperCollider, I always wondered; L.A. was a death sentence for her and it's all your fault, you undergraduate-inveigling fool; I'm probably not as desperate as I seem; Mama told me not to come
November 26, 2018
I wanted to read this because it sounded like a story about surviving a loss. It is that, and it was well-written. But it felt a little like watching someone's home movie while they explain what you're seeing. Nothing really interesting happens most of the time and when it did I was kind of unimpressed.
April 19, 2019
This was such a slow, unfocused and unsatisfying book. The science was fine, but didn't really add anything to the story. It was sometimes meaningful, but often pointless and just seemed to exist so that the author could show off her physics knowledge. I didn't pick this up to learn about physics.
Aside from that, I just didn't know what the point of anything was. Helen is such a passive and useless character. She lets everything happen to her, including losing touch with her best friend. Then she proceeds to fall in love with Charlie's husband? While still being kind of in love with her ex-boyfriend, who is now engaged? Girl was a mess and didn't get any better. Nothing was tied up by the end. The book literally ends in the middle of a random scene. I know this was supposed to be a book about grief but there was absolutely no plot, not even a story about moving on from grief. It just felt like a bunch of rambling with science thrown in. Pass.
Aside from that, I just didn't know what the point of anything was. Helen is such a passive and useless character. She lets everything happen to her, including losing touch with her best friend. Then she proceeds to fall in love with Charlie's husband? While still being kind of in love with her ex-boyfriend, who is now engaged? Girl was a mess and didn't get any better. Nothing was tied up by the end. The book literally ends in the middle of a random scene. I know this was supposed to be a book about grief but there was absolutely no plot, not even a story about moving on from grief. It just felt like a bunch of rambling with science thrown in. Pass.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 16, 2019
While I applaud an English major taking on PhD level physics as a topic for her character, I absolutely hated this book. As a pretty high level scientist myself, the science bits were fine… But just a big fat boring ass book about grief? No thanks. I made it to about page 100 and just gave up on it. Not my thing. Baffled with black holes, expanding infinity, and the god particle did not make me like the character or think more of her. I actually didn’t like her at all. I think the science was a ploy to make somebody feel smart.. Leave this one on the shelf
September 25, 2023
There are very few instances in my life where I have supported someone’s claim to false advertising. Whenever I’ve heard someone make a claim about a book or a movie or a game being false in the way that it was sold or marketed I generally lean more towards the notion that it didn’t live up to the expectations that that person placed upon it rather than some sort of foul play being the cause for disappointment. That being said, I have a strong feeling towards a claim that Lost and Wanted was misrepresented not only in the synopsis provided on the dust jacket but also in reviews and pull quotes from other sources.
When I came across Lost and Wanted on Book of the Month it seemed to be billed on the premise that it was about a woman whose friend that she had lost may not actually be dead, and that it incorporated scientific elements which could lean towards time travel. Furthermore, the book jacket used descriptions and pull quotes that used words like “searing” and “suspenseful” and continued to promote the story as a potential time travel mystery about the passing of a friend of a physics professor. When it comes to the blurb, a conflict is suggested that Helen, the story’s protagonist, finds the idea that time travel or some sort of paranormal explanation cuts against all that she believes in. In reality, the book has nothing of the sort that was described upon the dust jacket or by the outlets that are selling the book.
Perhaps the saddest aspect of this truth is that this principal conflict of a physics professor coming face to face with something that she can’t find herself believing in is a wonderful setup for a book that would have incredible potential. However, reality is often disappointing, and in the case of Lost and Wanted that intrigue of the deceased friend, Charlie, contacting Helen makes up less than five percent of the novel’s actual content. In fact, you could cut out that entire subplot and the book wouldn’t change. This fact gets to my biggest point about Lost and Wanted, there’s nothing actually going on, the book doesn’t really have a story or a plot that drives the characters forward. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I learned that the subplot about Charlie contacting Helen after her death was written in solely to give the book something to market, or was specifically chosen for emphasis by the publisher for the same reason.
In my past reviews, I’ve mentioned that a writer has to give their reader a reason to actually read the book, basic English classes would tell you that your paper or writing prompt has to have a “hook” and that it’s that opening hook that draws your audience into what you have to say. It isn’t enough to simply put words on the page, it’s the job of the author to give the reader a reason to actually read what those words on the page are. Lost and Wanted offers no intrigue or reason for anyone to read it, there is no hook that helps draw you in, and Mrs. Freudenberger never writes in a reason that would be sufficient enough for a casual reader to continue on past page fifty. Nothing of substance lies within the pages of this novel, it’s just ham-fisted social commentary and overly detailed scientific discourse where drama and conflict are supposed to be.
I remember listening to a podcast once where the two hosts were going through submissions to an old Harper Collins contest and reading out the different one or two sentence synopses that the writers had left for their work. After about twenty minutes of this, there was a break in the laughter and one of the hosts asked the other if everything on the site was “high concept bollocks” and then proceeded to ask if anyone had written a book about “some guy going about his life”. Now, I by no means wish to disparage slice of life content or say that the genre is generally bad, it’s not. However, Lost and Wanted is essentially slice of life in its purest form, rather than have an actual plot, it’s the ultimate actualization of what Simon was asking for on that podcast, except it’s a girl rather than a guy.
In lieu of having a high concept or thrilling plot a writer has to create some sort of vector with which the reader can enter the story and remain engaged with it, that’s why most slice of life books happen around a major event for the characters involved. Those events give the reader something to connect with and become invested in and it gives the writer something to mine for depth and engaging content. Normally, the death of a close friend would be something that would provide a lot of potential for an engaging story, grief and the process of losing someone is one of the things that can affect a human being the most, but Mrs. Freudenberger squanders the opportunity and writes almost nothing that takes advantage of the situation that Helen is in to affect the character.
The book jacket describes Helen and Charlie as great friends, and that Helen will be drawn into the “web” of their past to learn more about Charlie and what happened to her. However, we don’t ever really see any strong reaction or emotion to the passing of her friend until about page fifty, and Helen doesn’t really cry until almost halfway through the book. Moreover, I wouldn’t describe the protagonist’s behavior as matching someone who’s grieving, instead, she simply goes on with her life like nothing’s actually happened. Ultimately, that state of normalcy Helen is in makes Lost and Wanted what it is, and I would put forth the idea that a more fitting title would have been An indeterminate amount of time with Helen Clapp, because this book is like reading someone’s schedule. We read as she goes to work, interacts with her child, talks to her sister, helps her deceased friends’ husband and daughter, and that’s all the book is, over and over and over again. There was only ever one thread in the book that was interesting, and it was the backstory of how a predatory teacher affected Charlie’s life forever, but it’s short-lived and delivers no real catharsis.
Perhaps the biggest crime this book commits is the inclusion of obsessively detailed descriptions and conversations of physics. Now, for someone like myself, who actively enjoys reading about space and the science that governs the way it works, this inclusion doesn’t directly alienate me. However, it’s inclusion in the narrative clearly alienates most people, as many of the reviews for this book state that the inclusion of the science took away from their experience reading the book. These sections are incredibly common and ridiculously clinical in the way that they’re written and your average person who picks this book up without reading about it beforehand most likely won’t feel motivated to continue reading once they encounter a few of them, and the worst part is that the science holds no actual importance to the story.
If Helen’s main conflict was reconciling science with the fact that her friend was possibly still alive then it would have some justification for its prominent position in the narrative, instead, it comes across as complete filler to pad out conversations or to increase the book’s word count. I’ve spoken at length in my other reviews about how every inclusion in a novel has to have a justification and that it’s the individual importance of the smaller details to the overall story that will do much of the work in making a story great. These discourses in science go against that standard in a way that I’ve not seen in a long time, they not only offer nothing to the plot to justify their inclusion, but they make the book significantly worse.
The book doesn’t just lack a plot, it also lacks any characters with an arc. In any well-written book, the grand catharsis from the resolution of the main conflict should be supported by the individual changes that take place within the principal characters of the story. A hero who manages to defeat the villain and bring home the elixir can’t simply be the same person who set out on the call to adventure, there has to be some growth for a character to have a complete arc. Helen Clapp, however, feels no different at the end of the book than she did at the beginning, in fact, none of the characters really seem to undergo change. This isn’t for a lack of characterization either, this book characterizes Helen to death, so much time is spent making sure that we understand her entire backstory, her choices, and every single important detail. We hear the justifications that she has for her decisions and we figure out how she processes things and how she thinks, we know what changed her life for the better and what changed it for the worse, and yet she never actually changes further than the backstory we learned, she’s in stasis as a character.
It's not for lack of potential conflict either, it's simply that every situation she comes across has a clean solution or simply doesn’t bother her. The love of your life returns but is suddenly getting married? No issues, we had a joke about how I’d be his second wife. Your deceased best friend’s husband is moving in below you and the two of you are growing a relationship? No worries, there’s no sexual tension or temptation, I’m good. Your IVF child is wanting a father? We already discussed it, he’s fine. Your best friend dies? Well, we hadn’t really been in touch so I’m okay. You may have to go to the wedding of the man you still love? Nope, I have a conference in Europe right before and can’t afford both trips. Your deceased friend’s husband wants to move in below you but you already have tenants? Well, they have friends that just moved to New York that want them to move in with them and they want to terminate the lease early, no tough decisions for me!
The book has no tension, no drama, no plot, absolutely nothing. I only give the book two stars because the technical aspect of writing was well done. Mrs. Freudenberger’s syntax, grammar, word usage, and sentence construction were all very good. Beyond that though, the writing has no passion, no style, no real character, it feels cold and detached like it was written by some sort of Grammarly robot. In fact, for a book that is supposed to be written by its own main character I didn’t even realize it until she referred to herself. If you could write a book by committee, I imagine it would turn out reading something like Lost and wanted, only it most likely would have provided an actual plot. I genuinely challenge anyone to tell me what the plot of this book is, because it’s not about dealing with grief, it's not about being contacted by someone who’s supposed to be dead, I genuinely have no idea what I would say to someone if I was asked what the book was about.
If Simon Lane is still looking for a book that fills the desires he had while recording that podcast many years ago then this would certainly work. Otherwise, I can’t find myself being able to recommend this book to anyone, it has no substance and it gives you no actual reason to spend your time flipping its pages. After I closed the back cover I certainly felt lost and wanted another book.
When I came across Lost and Wanted on Book of the Month it seemed to be billed on the premise that it was about a woman whose friend that she had lost may not actually be dead, and that it incorporated scientific elements which could lean towards time travel. Furthermore, the book jacket used descriptions and pull quotes that used words like “searing” and “suspenseful” and continued to promote the story as a potential time travel mystery about the passing of a friend of a physics professor. When it comes to the blurb, a conflict is suggested that Helen, the story’s protagonist, finds the idea that time travel or some sort of paranormal explanation cuts against all that she believes in. In reality, the book has nothing of the sort that was described upon the dust jacket or by the outlets that are selling the book.
Perhaps the saddest aspect of this truth is that this principal conflict of a physics professor coming face to face with something that she can’t find herself believing in is a wonderful setup for a book that would have incredible potential. However, reality is often disappointing, and in the case of Lost and Wanted that intrigue of the deceased friend, Charlie, contacting Helen makes up less than five percent of the novel’s actual content. In fact, you could cut out that entire subplot and the book wouldn’t change. This fact gets to my biggest point about Lost and Wanted, there’s nothing actually going on, the book doesn’t really have a story or a plot that drives the characters forward. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I learned that the subplot about Charlie contacting Helen after her death was written in solely to give the book something to market, or was specifically chosen for emphasis by the publisher for the same reason.
In my past reviews, I’ve mentioned that a writer has to give their reader a reason to actually read the book, basic English classes would tell you that your paper or writing prompt has to have a “hook” and that it’s that opening hook that draws your audience into what you have to say. It isn’t enough to simply put words on the page, it’s the job of the author to give the reader a reason to actually read what those words on the page are. Lost and Wanted offers no intrigue or reason for anyone to read it, there is no hook that helps draw you in, and Mrs. Freudenberger never writes in a reason that would be sufficient enough for a casual reader to continue on past page fifty. Nothing of substance lies within the pages of this novel, it’s just ham-fisted social commentary and overly detailed scientific discourse where drama and conflict are supposed to be.
I remember listening to a podcast once where the two hosts were going through submissions to an old Harper Collins contest and reading out the different one or two sentence synopses that the writers had left for their work. After about twenty minutes of this, there was a break in the laughter and one of the hosts asked the other if everything on the site was “high concept bollocks” and then proceeded to ask if anyone had written a book about “some guy going about his life”. Now, I by no means wish to disparage slice of life content or say that the genre is generally bad, it’s not. However, Lost and Wanted is essentially slice of life in its purest form, rather than have an actual plot, it’s the ultimate actualization of what Simon was asking for on that podcast, except it’s a girl rather than a guy.
In lieu of having a high concept or thrilling plot a writer has to create some sort of vector with which the reader can enter the story and remain engaged with it, that’s why most slice of life books happen around a major event for the characters involved. Those events give the reader something to connect with and become invested in and it gives the writer something to mine for depth and engaging content. Normally, the death of a close friend would be something that would provide a lot of potential for an engaging story, grief and the process of losing someone is one of the things that can affect a human being the most, but Mrs. Freudenberger squanders the opportunity and writes almost nothing that takes advantage of the situation that Helen is in to affect the character.
The book jacket describes Helen and Charlie as great friends, and that Helen will be drawn into the “web” of their past to learn more about Charlie and what happened to her. However, we don’t ever really see any strong reaction or emotion to the passing of her friend until about page fifty, and Helen doesn’t really cry until almost halfway through the book. Moreover, I wouldn’t describe the protagonist’s behavior as matching someone who’s grieving, instead, she simply goes on with her life like nothing’s actually happened. Ultimately, that state of normalcy Helen is in makes Lost and Wanted what it is, and I would put forth the idea that a more fitting title would have been An indeterminate amount of time with Helen Clapp, because this book is like reading someone’s schedule. We read as she goes to work, interacts with her child, talks to her sister, helps her deceased friends’ husband and daughter, and that’s all the book is, over and over and over again. There was only ever one thread in the book that was interesting, and it was the backstory of how a predatory teacher affected Charlie’s life forever, but it’s short-lived and delivers no real catharsis.
Perhaps the biggest crime this book commits is the inclusion of obsessively detailed descriptions and conversations of physics. Now, for someone like myself, who actively enjoys reading about space and the science that governs the way it works, this inclusion doesn’t directly alienate me. However, it’s inclusion in the narrative clearly alienates most people, as many of the reviews for this book state that the inclusion of the science took away from their experience reading the book. These sections are incredibly common and ridiculously clinical in the way that they’re written and your average person who picks this book up without reading about it beforehand most likely won’t feel motivated to continue reading once they encounter a few of them, and the worst part is that the science holds no actual importance to the story.
If Helen’s main conflict was reconciling science with the fact that her friend was possibly still alive then it would have some justification for its prominent position in the narrative, instead, it comes across as complete filler to pad out conversations or to increase the book’s word count. I’ve spoken at length in my other reviews about how every inclusion in a novel has to have a justification and that it’s the individual importance of the smaller details to the overall story that will do much of the work in making a story great. These discourses in science go against that standard in a way that I’ve not seen in a long time, they not only offer nothing to the plot to justify their inclusion, but they make the book significantly worse.
The book doesn’t just lack a plot, it also lacks any characters with an arc. In any well-written book, the grand catharsis from the resolution of the main conflict should be supported by the individual changes that take place within the principal characters of the story. A hero who manages to defeat the villain and bring home the elixir can’t simply be the same person who set out on the call to adventure, there has to be some growth for a character to have a complete arc. Helen Clapp, however, feels no different at the end of the book than she did at the beginning, in fact, none of the characters really seem to undergo change. This isn’t for a lack of characterization either, this book characterizes Helen to death, so much time is spent making sure that we understand her entire backstory, her choices, and every single important detail. We hear the justifications that she has for her decisions and we figure out how she processes things and how she thinks, we know what changed her life for the better and what changed it for the worse, and yet she never actually changes further than the backstory we learned, she’s in stasis as a character.
It's not for lack of potential conflict either, it's simply that every situation she comes across has a clean solution or simply doesn’t bother her. The love of your life returns but is suddenly getting married? No issues, we had a joke about how I’d be his second wife. Your deceased best friend’s husband is moving in below you and the two of you are growing a relationship? No worries, there’s no sexual tension or temptation, I’m good. Your IVF child is wanting a father? We already discussed it, he’s fine. Your best friend dies? Well, we hadn’t really been in touch so I’m okay. You may have to go to the wedding of the man you still love? Nope, I have a conference in Europe right before and can’t afford both trips. Your deceased friend’s husband wants to move in below you but you already have tenants? Well, they have friends that just moved to New York that want them to move in with them and they want to terminate the lease early, no tough decisions for me!
The book has no tension, no drama, no plot, absolutely nothing. I only give the book two stars because the technical aspect of writing was well done. Mrs. Freudenberger’s syntax, grammar, word usage, and sentence construction were all very good. Beyond that though, the writing has no passion, no style, no real character, it feels cold and detached like it was written by some sort of Grammarly robot. In fact, for a book that is supposed to be written by its own main character I didn’t even realize it until she referred to herself. If you could write a book by committee, I imagine it would turn out reading something like Lost and wanted, only it most likely would have provided an actual plot. I genuinely challenge anyone to tell me what the plot of this book is, because it’s not about dealing with grief, it's not about being contacted by someone who’s supposed to be dead, I genuinely have no idea what I would say to someone if I was asked what the book was about.
If Simon Lane is still looking for a book that fills the desires he had while recording that podcast many years ago then this would certainly work. Otherwise, I can’t find myself being able to recommend this book to anyone, it has no substance and it gives you no actual reason to spend your time flipping its pages. After I closed the back cover I certainly felt lost and wanted another book.
April 2, 2019
*I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I think I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did, but that's not to say I disliked it.
This is not a ghost story so it's best to prepare yourself for that going in. Instead, it is a tale about loss and grief. Helen Clopp is an intelligent Physics professor and a solo mother by choice to the delightfully wonderful Jack. She is very, very scientifically minded which is crucial as to how she perceives the world. The relationship she has with Jack is very sweet and honest. In fact, the parts that I liked the most in this book were the interactions with the children. Helen is dealing with the loss of her college friend Charlie meanwhile she's receiving emails and messages from her recently deceased friend, made all the worse when her son Jack claims he's seen Charlie in her office.
The science throughout was completely lost on me. Even when put into accessible terms, like the novels that Helen is said to write, it just tends to go way over my head. Physics and I just don't get on. And there's a loooot of science jokes and references through this that did hinder my enjoyment, especially when Neel, Helen's coworker and ex, rudely states at one point that autoimmune disorders aren't real, which I suppose is my own personal bugbear. The way it's told narratively was also confusing to me at times and I found it hard to get a grasp on how much time was passing.
Still, I found the resolution of the messages from Charlie very sweet and realistic with how grief is dealt with which again loops round to how I cared for some characters more than I did others. Overall, I did like the book but I can't see myself rereading this, but I definitely was hooked from the first line.
https://heyannarld.wordpress.com/2019...
I think I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did, but that's not to say I disliked it.
This is not a ghost story so it's best to prepare yourself for that going in. Instead, it is a tale about loss and grief. Helen Clopp is an intelligent Physics professor and a solo mother by choice to the delightfully wonderful Jack. She is very, very scientifically minded which is crucial as to how she perceives the world. The relationship she has with Jack is very sweet and honest. In fact, the parts that I liked the most in this book were the interactions with the children. Helen is dealing with the loss of her college friend Charlie meanwhile she's receiving emails and messages from her recently deceased friend, made all the worse when her son Jack claims he's seen Charlie in her office.
The science throughout was completely lost on me. Even when put into accessible terms, like the novels that Helen is said to write, it just tends to go way over my head. Physics and I just don't get on. And there's a loooot of science jokes and references through this that did hinder my enjoyment, especially when Neel, Helen's coworker and ex, rudely states at one point that autoimmune disorders aren't real, which I suppose is my own personal bugbear. The way it's told narratively was also confusing to me at times and I found it hard to get a grasp on how much time was passing.
Still, I found the resolution of the messages from Charlie very sweet and realistic with how grief is dealt with which again loops round to how I cared for some characters more than I did others. Overall, I did like the book but I can't see myself rereading this, but I definitely was hooked from the first line.
https://heyannarld.wordpress.com/2019...
November 20, 2019
Rounded up from 3.5 stars.
I enjoy the genre sometimes dubbed fi-sci: fiction steeped in the world of science, and Freudenberger's new release takes place largely in the theoretical physics department of MIT. Helen is a physicist whose professional life is on track: her work on five-dimensional spacetime and black holes has earned her worldwide acclaim. But her personal life is thrown into disarray when she receives word that her best friend has unexpectedly died.
I especially enjoyed the subtly-drawn parallels between quantum physics and complex personal relationships. I recommended this book on Episode 177 of What Should I Read Next ("When your reading life is a roller coaster") for its compassionate portrayal of living with chronic illness (lupus).
I love a good title, and this one comes from an Auden poem: "For time is inches / And the heart's changes / Where ghost has haunted / Lost and wanted."
I enjoy the genre sometimes dubbed fi-sci: fiction steeped in the world of science, and Freudenberger's new release takes place largely in the theoretical physics department of MIT. Helen is a physicist whose professional life is on track: her work on five-dimensional spacetime and black holes has earned her worldwide acclaim. But her personal life is thrown into disarray when she receives word that her best friend has unexpectedly died.
I especially enjoyed the subtly-drawn parallels between quantum physics and complex personal relationships. I recommended this book on Episode 177 of What Should I Read Next ("When your reading life is a roller coaster") for its compassionate portrayal of living with chronic illness (lupus).
I love a good title, and this one comes from an Auden poem: "For time is inches / And the heart's changes / Where ghost has haunted / Lost and wanted."
April 12, 2019
Two and a half stars would have more accurately described my rating for this novel. Unfortunately this book is so heavy into physics that you lose the humanity of the story. It would have been a great story about loss, even questioning if people are "gone" when they die but it gets far to technical for the average reader. I was left many times throughout the book wondering why I needed to know so many facts - so much so that it felt like a science book pretending to be fiction. It was like the author learned all this cool stuff and had to throw it all in, even though most of it was not necessary to move the plot along. A strong editor would have been useful.
October 26, 2022
The blurb makes this sound like a ghost story, a woman haunted by her dead friend, and while I get why I did this, it sounded horrible. I'd never have picked up this book if I hadn't liked everything else Freudenberger put out before.
This is a fun and easy to read novel about relationships and loss, being a parent and a friend. I liked the physics backdrop and didn't find it confusing at all, since it's not a plot point - but I also find the subjects very fascinating. If anything, it's a tad gimmicky at times, but thankfully the characters and their relationships to each other are more important here. I read this in a day and was sad to let go of them.
This is a fun and easy to read novel about relationships and loss, being a parent and a friend. I liked the physics backdrop and didn't find it confusing at all, since it's not a plot point - but I also find the subjects very fascinating. If anything, it's a tad gimmicky at times, but thankfully the characters and their relationships to each other are more important here. I read this in a day and was sad to let go of them.
July 5, 2019
After Helen's sort-of-former best friend, Charlie, dies, Helen receives a text message -- from Charlie's phone. Then the messages continue, not with any regularity, but often enough to keep Helen confused and off-balance. Meanwhile, Charlie's husband, Terence, moves into Helen's basement apartment with his 8-year-old daughter, who gets along well with Helen's 7-year-old son. And life goes on ... both predictably and not-so-predictably.I really enjoyed this book, even though really, nothing happens. It's a sweet, poignant meditation on how people cope with grief and change more than any kind of plot-driven story, despite the mystery offered by the continuing text messages from Charlie's phone number. The characters -- Helen, Terence, Charlie's daughter and parents -- all deal with the loss in their own ways, which are not very similar. The story definitely highlights the weird combination of isolation and not-always-welcome connection of mourning a mutually loved person.
Other stuff fills the book out. Helen is an astrophysicist at MIT, and I really liked the science reflections and perspectives of her narrative. The man she once thought she might marry marries someone else, and that brings another sort-of loss into the story. She also struggles with a crush on handsome Terence that she knows is doomed and pointless, but which also keeps her life a little more interesting. And the answer to where those text messages are coming from is possibly really obvious (but I never guessed), and also very sweet and touching.
This is a quiet, deep, inner-experience type book, and your feelings about it will probably depend on how much you like cosmology and string theory, and how much thoughtfulness versus action you're in the mood for. I can see myself having been utterly bored by this book had I been in a different mood when I read it. But I was in the right mood and I loved it.
April 19, 2019
Helen knows everything about physics; Helen knows nothing about human relationships. Not that she hasn't had a few in her life...there's Neel Jonnal, a fellow physicist and a college boyfriend...her young son, Jack, who she conceived after giving up on finding a life partner...and, maybe the strongest and longest relationship of her life, Charlie Boyce, her college roommate. It is only when Charlie dies and Helen begins receiving text messages from her old friend that Helen begins to contemplate the limits of human consciousness.
The story has elements of science fiction and fantasy and mystery and romance, but the real story is about Helen and the bonds she tries to forge with others.
Whew! This book is deeply (DEEPLY) science-y, but, if you are like me and tried to skip science in school, don't let that hold you back from reading this delight of a book.
The story has elements of science fiction and fantasy and mystery and romance, but the real story is about Helen and the bonds she tries to forge with others.
Whew! This book is deeply (DEEPLY) science-y, but, if you are like me and tried to skip science in school, don't let that hold you back from reading this delight of a book.
October 16, 2020
While it's well written, it's another story that didn't grab my attention and found it somewhat lackluster. Not much more to say.
June 8, 2019
3.5, rounded up
Slow going for me, particularly in the beginning. I wasn’t connecting and even set the novel aside for several days uncertain whether I would return to it. I obviously did, although, for me, it remained a slow go until well into the novel. Still, I am glad I stuck with it. Freudenberger is an immensely talented writer and Lost and Wanted is a smart and - I’m stealing from Ben Fountain’s jacket burb- ‘brainy’ read (the main character is a physics professor after all.) Freudenberger has done her homework, making physics somewhat understandable even for someone like me who can only manage science at a basic level. Yes, physics factors into the novel, but this is really more (and I simplify) about love and grief. If I found the plot less than gripping, the cast of characters were well developed, interesting, complex and sympathetic. I appreciated that their paths were realistic, no attempts to tie things up in fancy bows. Overall, I think it a wise, beautifully written novel, but not a page-turner for me and that left me a little torn over a final rating.
Slow going for me, particularly in the beginning. I wasn’t connecting and even set the novel aside for several days uncertain whether I would return to it. I obviously did, although, for me, it remained a slow go until well into the novel. Still, I am glad I stuck with it. Freudenberger is an immensely talented writer and Lost and Wanted is a smart and - I’m stealing from Ben Fountain’s jacket burb- ‘brainy’ read (the main character is a physics professor after all.) Freudenberger has done her homework, making physics somewhat understandable even for someone like me who can only manage science at a basic level. Yes, physics factors into the novel, but this is really more (and I simplify) about love and grief. If I found the plot less than gripping, the cast of characters were well developed, interesting, complex and sympathetic. I appreciated that their paths were realistic, no attempts to tie things up in fancy bows. Overall, I think it a wise, beautifully written novel, but not a page-turner for me and that left me a little torn over a final rating.
April 13, 2019
I hesitate to write anything so soon after finishing this novel--I started it in the morning and finished it last night, and I'm still lost in the world of the book, still looking back and seeing scenes again. Still wondering about the characters and the physics. But LOST AND WANTED is such a beautifully written book that I wanted to be sure I responded to it in some way. Friendships are complicated, and Freudenberger shows us the way they fade in and out through the years. This is a book about relationships and love and the complications of loss. It challenges the reader to think deeply about who we are to each other, the ways that we connect, and the things that propel us apart.
April 27, 2019
Ugggggggggggg
Too many details not enough plot.
I do not recommend.
Too many details not enough plot.
I do not recommend.
February 20, 2019
SPOILERS (and other things) below; I'm not sure that I can usefully review this book without them, so you'll just have to deal.
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I have a lot of thoughts about this book, which is usually a good thing. (For the sake of contrast, I have no thoughts about books by Dan Brown.) In this case, though, I think that the multiplicity of my thoughts relates to the somewhat scattered nature of the book, which is not ideal.
For example, the main plotline of the book, insofar as it has one, feels like it takes place in the first fifty and then the last fifty pages (or so): the main character's friend dies, the dead woman's phone goes missing and then starts sending messages to people...two hundred pages go by...and then the thing with the phone is resolved. The intervening two hundred pages seem to almost belong to another story (or maybe more than one other story). For me, as a reader, this was not entirely satisfying. Setting up an interesting premise (the missing phone, the messages) and then dropping that premise until the very end only succeeded in making me impatient, especially because I'd already figured out what was going on with the phone and just wanted to see some confirmation. So, as a story, this book felt a little as though it was at loose ends.
Then there are the themes. The main one is the nature of human relationships (which, of course, finds some parallels in physics every now and then). But there are also prominent race and gender themes that, again, kinda feel like they belong in another story. I'm not saying that because I disagree with those themes or because I'm tired of reading about them; to the contrary, there's a good chance that I'm further to the left than Freudenberger is, and I'm generally happy to see these ideas penetrate the mainstream. But, at least to my mind, there's no obvious connection between the race/gender stuff and the relationships-are-like-physics stuff. And, as a result, I again felt like I was reading multiple books or stories that were competing with each other rather than supporting one another.
I felt similarly about the characters as well. Character work and scene work are, in my estimation, Freudenberger's most pronounced strengths - she is, I think, a very good writer. Still, I didn't feel as though I spent enough time with any one character's emotional life to become emotionally caught up myself. In part I suppose this is because so much of the book is given over to physics stuff, but in part it's also because, what with the dueling plotlines and dueling themes, no one character (or relationship, even) is given the chance to be an emotional anchor for the text - or, at least, that's my take on the matter.
Finally (at least in terms of this splintered feeling I have), there's the matter of the book's approach to the afterlife. For the vast majority of the story, the afterlife is pretty soundly rejected, and I endorse that rejection both as a real idea and as the appropriate literary decision for this particular work. Again, the primary story here is about a friendship; accordingly, the primary theme is the nature of such relationships. In those terms, I simply don't see how the supernatural could or should come into play. And yet, for some reason, the book ends on a distinctly supernatural note, which, on my reading, only succeeds in adding yet another element that operates at cross-purposes to the rest.
So I think that three stars is probably right for this novel. The writing is, to reiterate, skillful and frequently enjoyable (with a few minor exceptions noted below). But I do think that Freudenberger's storytelling let her down a little bit. I can see this book being deeply appreciated by a lot of people. I'm just not one of them, is all.
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Okay, so - the writing. I only have a few nitpicks, but I do have them. One is that I find her use of punctuation to be a bit weird. (Toldja these were nitpicks.) It also bugs me when people use "now" in the middle of past tense narration. (This is a losing battle, I know.) But probably my two biggest nitpicks relate to the two main characters and how Freudenberger handles them. Helen, the narrator, is the easier example, because she fairly consistently demonstrates a low level of emotional awareness, which Freudenberger exploits for drama. I guess this is maybe an accurate portrayal of a certain type of person, and in that sense she should be credited for her verisimilitude, but at times it also felt a little canned, perhaps because it's a character trait that was never explored in depth. Your mileage may vary, I guess.
The other character nitpick I have is with Charlie, Helen's dead friend. There are, in my opinion, too many passages like this about Charlie:
"She admired Addison Gayle on blaxploitation and Barbara Creed on slasher films, but what she really loved was a period drama, anything set in another place or time. She was obsessed with the first film version of Christopher Hampton's Dangerous Liaisons, and especially with Glenn Close's extravagant Merteuil; the film was what led her eventually to Laclos." (60)
The problem with this is not that I don't know who the fuck these people are (Gayle, Creed, Hampton, Laclos). Rather, the problem is that I don't feel like I have any reason to care - and, therefore, no reason to care about the character herself. Or, worse yet, the problem is that I begin to actively dislike this character and this narrator for walling themselves off behind this elitist bibliography of theorists and litterateurs. This is a minor pet peeve of mine, but it's getting larger over time as I encounter more and more of this type of thing in contemporary fiction. Look: learning is good. Literary theory is good. Erudition is good. But even if this type of name-dropping is not alienating outright, it's a waste of my time as a reader.
People who want to cite academic sources in their novels should, in my opinion, cite the content of those sources. Choosing instead to simply list a name, as Freudenberger does, is liable to result in entire paragraphs that are littered with vacancies in the reader's understanding, which is not fun. If this had been the point - if, in other words, Freudenberger had been intentionally trying to make Charlie seem unlikable - then I guess that would've been one thing. (Although even then I think it could be done in a more elegant way.) As it is, though, this sort of thing took me out of the book on more than one occasion.
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Last, please note that I got this book for free through this site's giveaway program.
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I have a lot of thoughts about this book, which is usually a good thing. (For the sake of contrast, I have no thoughts about books by Dan Brown.) In this case, though, I think that the multiplicity of my thoughts relates to the somewhat scattered nature of the book, which is not ideal.
For example, the main plotline of the book, insofar as it has one, feels like it takes place in the first fifty and then the last fifty pages (or so): the main character's friend dies, the dead woman's phone goes missing and then starts sending messages to people...two hundred pages go by...and then the thing with the phone is resolved. The intervening two hundred pages seem to almost belong to another story (or maybe more than one other story). For me, as a reader, this was not entirely satisfying. Setting up an interesting premise (the missing phone, the messages) and then dropping that premise until the very end only succeeded in making me impatient, especially because I'd already figured out what was going on with the phone and just wanted to see some confirmation. So, as a story, this book felt a little as though it was at loose ends.
Then there are the themes. The main one is the nature of human relationships (which, of course, finds some parallels in physics every now and then). But there are also prominent race and gender themes that, again, kinda feel like they belong in another story. I'm not saying that because I disagree with those themes or because I'm tired of reading about them; to the contrary, there's a good chance that I'm further to the left than Freudenberger is, and I'm generally happy to see these ideas penetrate the mainstream. But, at least to my mind, there's no obvious connection between the race/gender stuff and the relationships-are-like-physics stuff. And, as a result, I again felt like I was reading multiple books or stories that were competing with each other rather than supporting one another.
I felt similarly about the characters as well. Character work and scene work are, in my estimation, Freudenberger's most pronounced strengths - she is, I think, a very good writer. Still, I didn't feel as though I spent enough time with any one character's emotional life to become emotionally caught up myself. In part I suppose this is because so much of the book is given over to physics stuff, but in part it's also because, what with the dueling plotlines and dueling themes, no one character (or relationship, even) is given the chance to be an emotional anchor for the text - or, at least, that's my take on the matter.
Finally (at least in terms of this splintered feeling I have), there's the matter of the book's approach to the afterlife. For the vast majority of the story, the afterlife is pretty soundly rejected, and I endorse that rejection both as a real idea and as the appropriate literary decision for this particular work. Again, the primary story here is about a friendship; accordingly, the primary theme is the nature of such relationships. In those terms, I simply don't see how the supernatural could or should come into play. And yet, for some reason, the book ends on a distinctly supernatural note, which, on my reading, only succeeds in adding yet another element that operates at cross-purposes to the rest.
So I think that three stars is probably right for this novel. The writing is, to reiterate, skillful and frequently enjoyable (with a few minor exceptions noted below). But I do think that Freudenberger's storytelling let her down a little bit. I can see this book being deeply appreciated by a lot of people. I'm just not one of them, is all.
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Okay, so - the writing. I only have a few nitpicks, but I do have them. One is that I find her use of punctuation to be a bit weird. (Toldja these were nitpicks.) It also bugs me when people use "now" in the middle of past tense narration. (This is a losing battle, I know.) But probably my two biggest nitpicks relate to the two main characters and how Freudenberger handles them. Helen, the narrator, is the easier example, because she fairly consistently demonstrates a low level of emotional awareness, which Freudenberger exploits for drama. I guess this is maybe an accurate portrayal of a certain type of person, and in that sense she should be credited for her verisimilitude, but at times it also felt a little canned, perhaps because it's a character trait that was never explored in depth. Your mileage may vary, I guess.
The other character nitpick I have is with Charlie, Helen's dead friend. There are, in my opinion, too many passages like this about Charlie:
"She admired Addison Gayle on blaxploitation and Barbara Creed on slasher films, but what she really loved was a period drama, anything set in another place or time. She was obsessed with the first film version of Christopher Hampton's Dangerous Liaisons, and especially with Glenn Close's extravagant Merteuil; the film was what led her eventually to Laclos." (60)
The problem with this is not that I don't know who the fuck these people are (Gayle, Creed, Hampton, Laclos). Rather, the problem is that I don't feel like I have any reason to care - and, therefore, no reason to care about the character herself. Or, worse yet, the problem is that I begin to actively dislike this character and this narrator for walling themselves off behind this elitist bibliography of theorists and litterateurs. This is a minor pet peeve of mine, but it's getting larger over time as I encounter more and more of this type of thing in contemporary fiction. Look: learning is good. Literary theory is good. Erudition is good. But even if this type of name-dropping is not alienating outright, it's a waste of my time as a reader.
People who want to cite academic sources in their novels should, in my opinion, cite the content of those sources. Choosing instead to simply list a name, as Freudenberger does, is liable to result in entire paragraphs that are littered with vacancies in the reader's understanding, which is not fun. If this had been the point - if, in other words, Freudenberger had been intentionally trying to make Charlie seem unlikable - then I guess that would've been one thing. (Although even then I think it could be done in a more elegant way.) As it is, though, this sort of thing took me out of the book on more than one occasion.
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Last, please note that I got this book for free through this site's giveaway program.
February 28, 2019
Loved the science in the book. Also the themes are good. Women in science. Women of color and how hard it is to make a career. Sexual harassment. Only thing that I thought was that the protagonist Charly remained somewhat of a cardboard cut out until late in the book. I think it would be interesting to have a follow up about the relationships between her and Helen from her perspective.
Caveat: I won the book with Goodreads Giveaway.
Caveat: I won the book with Goodreads Giveaway.
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May 11, 2019I found so much to admire about this novel, yet it left me feeling a little flat in the end and I am trying to work out why.
In some respects I am reminded of Come With Me, another recent novel I read recently using science and technology as a way to talk about love and friendship, roads not taken, etc. Lost and Wanted has a lot more science, however, and for me at least is a more affecting story. There is a great deal about physics and the life of an academic, but also about the routines of being a parent. The exchanges the main character, Helen, has with her son and with another child, the daughter of her deceased best friend who ends up living in the basement apartment with her widowed father, were among my favorite aspects of the book. They are neither sentimental nor generic, but particular and weird the way life itself is. I also admired the nonlinear way the story was spun out, how it jumped between years without being confusing, and the gentle sense of suspense thus created.
What I think was less successful for me was some difficulty I had with the first-person narrator. At times Helen is sharply perceptive, noticing wonderfully subtle things about the people and situations around her. Yet she also at other points is presented as -- and truly seems -- quite awkward, a nerdy scientist who doesn't know how to relate to people. I know people are complicated and not always exactly the same way, but she didn't quite cohere for me, and this created some confusion, putting a distance between the reader and the teller. Part of it may have been related to the nonlinear storytelling -- we are jumping back in time to various earlier moments in her life and friendship with Charlie, whose death opens the action of the novel. Perhaps Helen has changed over time, become smarter about people? A difficulty of telling a story this way is that is harder to create a sense of change and progression.
This is one of those novels where everyone is annoyingly remarkable in some way: excessively good-looking, super-smart, or a Harvard professor, etc. You just have to deal with that.
The novels opens as a bit of a modern ghost story: Helen seems to be receiving text messages and email from her dead friend, and throwing all the physics in implies that somehow we will get some kind of spooky quantum explanation for why. The resolution of this mystery seems to try to have it both ways. Helen's efforts at romantic connection likewise fail; we are left with the sense that her life will be about science and her son, and that has to be OK. On one hand I admire the writer's refusal to tie everything up in a neat bow and give us a Hollywoodish happy ending. On the other I suppose I wanted something...more self-awareness? I don't know. Endings are hard; this certainly is not a terrible one.
On the sentence level I enjoyed this book a lot and found I had to read it slowly, not because it was confusing, but it demanded (and rewarded) patience.
In some respects I am reminded of Come With Me, another recent novel I read recently using science and technology as a way to talk about love and friendship, roads not taken, etc. Lost and Wanted has a lot more science, however, and for me at least is a more affecting story. There is a great deal about physics and the life of an academic, but also about the routines of being a parent. The exchanges the main character, Helen, has with her son and with another child, the daughter of her deceased best friend who ends up living in the basement apartment with her widowed father, were among my favorite aspects of the book. They are neither sentimental nor generic, but particular and weird the way life itself is. I also admired the nonlinear way the story was spun out, how it jumped between years without being confusing, and the gentle sense of suspense thus created.
What I think was less successful for me was some difficulty I had with the first-person narrator. At times Helen is sharply perceptive, noticing wonderfully subtle things about the people and situations around her. Yet she also at other points is presented as -- and truly seems -- quite awkward, a nerdy scientist who doesn't know how to relate to people. I know people are complicated and not always exactly the same way, but she didn't quite cohere for me, and this created some confusion, putting a distance between the reader and the teller. Part of it may have been related to the nonlinear storytelling -- we are jumping back in time to various earlier moments in her life and friendship with Charlie, whose death opens the action of the novel. Perhaps Helen has changed over time, become smarter about people? A difficulty of telling a story this way is that is harder to create a sense of change and progression.
This is one of those novels where everyone is annoyingly remarkable in some way: excessively good-looking, super-smart, or a Harvard professor, etc. You just have to deal with that.
The novels opens as a bit of a modern ghost story: Helen seems to be receiving text messages and email from her dead friend, and throwing all the physics in implies that somehow we will get some kind of spooky quantum explanation for why. The resolution of this mystery seems to try to have it both ways. Helen's efforts at romantic connection likewise fail; we are left with the sense that her life will be about science and her son, and that has to be OK. On one hand I admire the writer's refusal to tie everything up in a neat bow and give us a Hollywoodish happy ending. On the other I suppose I wanted something...more self-awareness? I don't know. Endings are hard; this certainly is not a terrible one.
On the sentence level I enjoyed this book a lot and found I had to read it slowly, not because it was confusing, but it demanded (and rewarded) patience.
April 14, 2019
This is one of the great books of the year, and the subject matter is so timely, read it right on the heels of the pictures of an actual black hole, discovered by a female MIT physicist. What research must have been involved in the writing! This is right up there with the best of Donna Tartt, Kate Atkinson, and Hilary Mantel and every male writer who's ever tried to write a book.
I kept thinking that sooner or later I'd get bored with all the theoretical physics, but instead I learned so much. And the plot with that whisper of the paranormal kept me reading long after my bedtime.
Kudos to the author.
I kept thinking that sooner or later I'd get bored with all the theoretical physics, but instead I learned so much. And the plot with that whisper of the paranormal kept me reading long after my bedtime.
Kudos to the author.
May 2, 2022
This was one of the slowest books I’ve ever read, and that’s saying a lot. Somehow though, the pace wasn’t the worst thing about it. There was basically no plot the whole way, but all of a sudden the book just ends without resolving literally anything. I didn’t really like Helen as a main character at all, but that was the least of my complaints with this one. Sorry to say but I didn’t enjoy it much at all.
June 1, 2019
I don't even know if I'm ready to talk about this book because I just finished it last night and I'm still feeling too bereft. It was the kind of book where you thought about the characters even when you weren't reading, and now that I'm finished I still can't stop thinking about them. Heartbreaking and poignant and funny all at the same time–I highly recommend it.
June 22, 2019
This novel seemed so compelling when it was featured as one of the BOTM selections. It was billed as literary fiction, but also appeared to include possible time travel and/or supernatural elements, and I was really drawn to it. In fact, both my sister and I were intrigued and chose it for our monthly selection. Unfortunately, while this novel’s premise is interesting and engaging, the delivery does not live up to this.
In terms of positives, I’d say the novel is well-written. The language is lovely, and sometimes I felt engaged by it. Sadly, this was really the only motivation I had for continuing the book.
It became clear early on that this novel would be largely character-driven rather than focused on plot. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but successful character studies require a lot of skill, and I don’t think Freudenberger is there yet. Because the plot is so lacking and the character development is not engaging enough to hold my attention, I found my attention constantly drifting while reading this. I’d read an entire page then realize I hadn’t comprehended what I’d read because my thoughts had shifted to something else. There were interesting bits here and there, but overall this novel contained a great deal of unnecessary or just uninteresting information.
I cannot recommend this novel, though I’m sure it will appeal to some readers. If you’re really into character studies, you might give it a try. Otherwise, I would steer clear on this one.
In terms of positives, I’d say the novel is well-written. The language is lovely, and sometimes I felt engaged by it. Sadly, this was really the only motivation I had for continuing the book.
It became clear early on that this novel would be largely character-driven rather than focused on plot. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but successful character studies require a lot of skill, and I don’t think Freudenberger is there yet. Because the plot is so lacking and the character development is not engaging enough to hold my attention, I found my attention constantly drifting while reading this. I’d read an entire page then realize I hadn’t comprehended what I’d read because my thoughts had shifted to something else. There were interesting bits here and there, but overall this novel contained a great deal of unnecessary or just uninteresting information.
I cannot recommend this novel, though I’m sure it will appeal to some readers. If you’re really into character studies, you might give it a try. Otherwise, I would steer clear on this one.
April 24, 2019
Helen is a scientist whose work has earned her tenured professorship and a status as a great physicist. But her world is turned to grief when she finds out a close friend of hers has died. Helen finds herself gravitating back towards her friend Charlie's life, and starts questioning all that she believes when she receives a mysterious text from Charlie. Just what is happening?
So that's a short version of what is used to market this book, and I was a little disappointed to find that this book clearly not what I thought it was. There's a lot of mystery and suspense built around how this book is marketed: mysterious texts from her dead friend, and her son claiming to see her friend in the house. Pair that with her work on five-dimensional space time, I thought this would be an interesting cross between science fiction and the paranormal. I thought wrong.
With that out of the way, the book reads more like a character driven story, about love and loss, and understanding one's place in the universe. It centers on themes of family and relationships, single motherhood and fatherhood, as well as a few elements of physics thrown in. However, I didn't find many of the characters that captivating, nor the story that enthralling. Ultimately, it had me feeling lost and wanting to finish it really quickly.
So that's a short version of what is used to market this book, and I was a little disappointed to find that this book clearly not what I thought it was. There's a lot of mystery and suspense built around how this book is marketed: mysterious texts from her dead friend, and her son claiming to see her friend in the house. Pair that with her work on five-dimensional space time, I thought this would be an interesting cross between science fiction and the paranormal. I thought wrong.
With that out of the way, the book reads more like a character driven story, about love and loss, and understanding one's place in the universe. It centers on themes of family and relationships, single motherhood and fatherhood, as well as a few elements of physics thrown in. However, I didn't find many of the characters that captivating, nor the story that enthralling. Ultimately, it had me feeling lost and wanting to finish it really quickly.
July 7, 2019
Helen and Charlie became friends at Harvard. It was one of those friendships that had a natural intimacy to it. Time and distance didn't lessen that, they just took different places in each other's lives. Charlie calls Helen one day, by the time Helen picks up there is an emptiness on the line. Was it a pocket dial or did Charlie change her mind about the conversation? The next day Helen receives a call from Charlie's husband informing her that Charlie died two days ago, the day before Helen received the call.
This is a story about grief and connections, explored through the lens of physics. Helen is a an award winning physicist, a single mother by choice and yet, there is something missing, just out of her grasp.
Lost and Wanted is a contemplative book, with a measured look at the impact of loss and its points of contact. Nell Freudenberger provides scaled down explanations of physics theories which may or may not have penetrated my brain. The portrayal of the kids stood out for me. Often, children are written as either too precocious or with little personality. Jack and Simmie feel true to life, the way children might act in these situations. Overall, this was an enjoyable read for me.
This is a story about grief and connections, explored through the lens of physics. Helen is a an award winning physicist, a single mother by choice and yet, there is something missing, just out of her grasp.
Lost and Wanted is a contemplative book, with a measured look at the impact of loss and its points of contact. Nell Freudenberger provides scaled down explanations of physics theories which may or may not have penetrated my brain. The portrayal of the kids stood out for me. Often, children are written as either too precocious or with little personality. Jack and Simmie feel true to life, the way children might act in these situations. Overall, this was an enjoyable read for me.
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