Lost and Wanted

Nell Freudenberger is the author of three previous works of fiction. She was selected for the New Yorker's 20 under 40 and Granta's Best of Young American Writers and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award and a Cullman fellowship from the New York Public Library. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Endlessly rich . . .It is Freudenberger's willingness to accept human contradictions here - and to lay them out with a combination of calm rigour and rueful comedy - thatso triumphantly makesLost and Wantedthe real thing
Dazzling. . .[Freudenberger explores] the nature of ambition, success and grief . . .brilliant
Freudenberger has a realeye for the subtle differences in how people react to adversity, anear for the way children talk, and anartist's clear-sighted commitmentto seeing thetotality of her characters
The effect is beautiful. . . Reading it, I was moved by intimacies near and far, real and imagined, lost and found in all the echoing corners of the expanding universe
This spooky mystery fuses nimbly explained science with a finely calibrated meditation on grief and paths not taken
Tender, sharply observed and marvellously rich
Are we connected? Are we alone? Freudenberger'sbrilliant and compassionatenovel takes on the big questions of the universe and proves, again, that she is one of America's greatest writers
[A] stunning portrayal of grief . . . The integration of ideas from physicssparks in the reader new ways of thinking about the nature of time and existence as well as, on a less cosmic scale, about human relationships . . .This is a beautiful and moving novel
Dazzling .. . [Freudenberger] dramatizes, through Helen, both the dawning awareness that life doesn't always allow for second chances and the great midlife consolation prize:a greater appreciation for those chances - and people - one has been given.
With page-turning acceleration,Lost and Wantedis a piercing meditation on the immutable truths that mourning calls into question. Freudenberger [has a] gravity-defying gift
Deeply involving, substantial, suspenseful, and psychologically lush . . . With daring, zest, insight, wit, and compassion,Lost and Wantedgracefully and thrillingly bridges the divide between science and art
Before the full scope of the accomplishment has sunk in-thelucid, compassionate portraits of a wide array of characters,the meticulous hand with which Freudenberger paints their world-you'll be beguiled, as I was, by Helen's narration, so full of humble longing and deep, sweet ruefulness
Thistender, engagingstory takes a physicist for its heroine, and boldly bends the forces of the universe to the binding love between friends, between partners, between parents and their children. It's aliterary and emotionaladventure peopled bycomplex, sympathetic characters,some of whom happen to do science as they navigate their most important relationships
Gorgeous, brainy, and passionate.Lost and Wantedis the best kind of big American novel:a majestic book that takes on nothing less than the nature of the universe-literally-while probing that similarly infinite mystery known as the human heart. Nell Freudenberger's writing is fearless and profound, as it absolutely must be in order to pull off this very modern ghost story that unfolds in the life of an MIT physicist.Freudenberger is one of our best novelists, and she's delivered a real powerhouse of a novel
Like the finely calibrated tools of particle physics described in its pages,NellFreudenberger's novel demonstrates an astonishing sensitivity to the forces that move us all.Her rendering of grief-with its shadings of denial, anger, longing, dark humor, and magic-is nothing short of perfection
An iridescent story of friendship.Lost and Wantedis an extraordinary book, startling in its open curiosity and love
Intellectually dazzling and almost unbearably moving,Lost and Wantedstayed with me long after I read it, its characters still moving in my brain like free electrons. Probing the mysteries of the physical universe and the equally mysterious nature of human connection,Nell Freudenberger writes fearlessly and lyrically about physics and grief; parenthood and friendship; the subtleties of race and the seriousness of female ambition.I've read many novels that make me think and some that made me cry, but few that did both as powerfully as this one did
A great work of art treads the line between the ingenious and the improbable. This is true of Nell Freudenberger's remarkableLost and Wanted. It somehow combines particle physics and paranormal phenomena to presenta lucid, humane and wryly comic view of the way we live today. One reads the novel with pleasure and marvels at Freudenberger's courage and intelligence
Brimming with wit and intelligence and devoted to things that matter: life, love, death, and the mysteries of the cosmos.Nell Freudenberger is good at explaining physics, buther real genius is in the depiction of relationships.Each one in the novel-whether between adults, adults and children, or among children-is unique, finely calibrated, and real. The title is a line from a poem by W.H. Auden, which doesn't fully hit until the end of the book, when it takes on heart-rending poignancy
I love novels that are obsessed with the "erotics of knowledge," books that understand how ideas are not the opposite of feelings but rather their intense distillation.A. S. Byatt's "Possession," Ann Patchett's "State of Wonder," Barbara Kingsolver's recent "Unsheltered," and Nell Freudenberger's forthcoming "Lost and Wanted" all are marvelous depictions of the direct link between the body's cravings and the passions of the mind
Freudenberger's outstanding achievement is thatLost and Wantedis also a moving story about down-to-earth issues like grief and loneliness