Josie Silver. The Two Lives of Lydia Bird. Ballantine Books, 2020. 369 pp. ISBN 978-0593135235 $26

*****

A laugh-out-loud, tear-jerker modern science fiction novel about magical sleeping pills that help a grieving woman revisit her unexpectedly deceased fiancé and their ongoing life together in her dreams… but at some point she needs to flush those pills down the toilet and move on…. doesn’t she? Lydia’s dreams of Freddie are the technicolor to her grey world.

Silver writes grief with such empathy. There is not a word out of place on the page, and a potential love interest develops slowly.