Lost and Wanted

In this third novel (after The Dissident and The Newlyweds), Freudenberger deploys the obscurities of science to untangle a series of interpersonal relationships as intricate as any quadratic equation. Narrator Helen, a theoretical physicist who graduated from Harvard and is now an MIT professor of repute, must ponder her place among those in her orbit when she begins, inexplicably, receiving text and email messages from her recently deceased best friend's telephone. The title suggests the loss of something earnestly desired, though what that need is initially seems unknown even to Helen. But in the end, through the apt analogy of gravity and with her own soul searching, she comes to an ultimate moment of "finding." This work is rich in the vivid detail characteristic of Freudenberger, and the narrator's lofty clarifications of physical concepts, such as gravitational waves and the efforts of Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory scientists to detect them, are balanced by hints of the mundane world Helen inhabits, such as a desk strewn with the detritus of everyday life, including a note reminding her to buy toothpaste.