Secrets of Happiness

Secrets of Happiness unfolds across families and lovers, across time and expectations, across the country and across the world, and the bigger it gets, the more it shows how deeply connected we are. Joan Silber writes with a frankness and freshness that draws the reader closer with every page. It would be impossible to overstate just how good this book is. -- Ann Patchett Secrets of Happiness is a swim in cool, clear water in which the contours and colours of all experience are magnified, purified, intensified. Joan Silber's translucent, morally attentive prose does something to the vision as well as the spirit: if you can look up from it, you'll find your own world altered - rinsed clean, and luminous. -- Charlotte Wood, author of THE WEEKEND This mesmerizing story of love, lies, and the consequences of betrayal brims with heart and intelligence. * Publishers Weekly * The author of the award-winning Improvement once again takes her scalpel to the complex anatomy of family, dissecting, with stunning precision, one young New Yorker's struggles with his father's secret life, the toll of deceits that doom a marriage, and the pitfalls of his own sexuality. * O, The Oprah Magazine * A new novel in stories from the master of the form...E]choes the great Grace Paley, to whom Silber is so close in spirit and voice. While Paley was an all-New York gal, Silber makes faraway places seem familiar - oh, for the time when we can work on knowing the world even one-tenth as well as she does. These secrets of happiness really will make you happy, at least for a few sweet hours. * Kirkus Reviews * Improvement is a major work of literature. -- Nick Hornby, on IMPROVEMENT * The Believer *