The Number We End Up With (2005)

Three years into a near-idyllic relationship, thirtysomething Anjou Lovett, a willfully prickly accountant-turned-census taker, loses her lover to another woman. Three days later, he's dead. The Number We End Up With (a title that fits neatly into Lovett's numerical obsession) lays down its wallop early. What follows are Anjou's door-to-door inquiries into the dry statistics of her neighbors' lives, which become more personal as she seeks answers to the mysteries of her deceased mother, her strong-willed sister, her absent father, and, most of all, her mercurial lover. Beth Goldner's writing is at times overwrought (dialogue is not her strong suit), and Anjou is often jarringly strident and self-absorbed. But the processing of death and loss isn't supposed to be pretty, and Goldner stays true to Anjou's quest in a way that's genuinely affecting.