Audiobook6 hours
Secrets of Happiness
Written by Joan Silber
Narrated by Amy Scanlon, Greg Watanabe, Graham Winton and
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this audiobook
A captivating tale of two families whose interlocking fates span the globe from PEN/Faulkner and National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author Joan Silber
Ethan, a young lawyer in New York, learns that his father has long kept a second family—a Thai wife and two kids living in Queens. In the aftermath of this revelation, Ethan’s mother spends a year working abroad, returning much changed, as events introduce her to
the other wife. Across town, Ethan’s half brothers are caught in their own complicated journeys: one brother’s penchant for minor delinquency has escalated, and the other must travel to Bangkok to bail him out, while the bargains their mother has struck about love
and money continue to shape their lives.
As Ethan finds himself caught in a love triangle of his own, the interwoven fates of these two households elegantly unfurl to encompass a woman rallying to help an ill brother with an unreliable lover and a filmmaker with a girlhood spent in Nepal. Evoking a generous and
humane spirit, and a story that ranges over three continents, Secrets of Happiness elucidates the ways people marshal the resources at hand to forge their own forms of joy.
Ethan, a young lawyer in New York, learns that his father has long kept a second family—a Thai wife and two kids living in Queens. In the aftermath of this revelation, Ethan’s mother spends a year working abroad, returning much changed, as events introduce her to
the other wife. Across town, Ethan’s half brothers are caught in their own complicated journeys: one brother’s penchant for minor delinquency has escalated, and the other must travel to Bangkok to bail him out, while the bargains their mother has struck about love
and money continue to shape their lives.
As Ethan finds himself caught in a love triangle of his own, the interwoven fates of these two households elegantly unfurl to encompass a woman rallying to help an ill brother with an unreliable lover and a filmmaker with a girlhood spent in Nepal. Evoking a generous and
humane spirit, and a story that ranges over three continents, Secrets of Happiness elucidates the ways people marshal the resources at hand to forge their own forms of joy.
Related to Secrets of Happiness
Related audiobooks
The Vixen: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Water I've Seen Is Running Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Child: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Promise: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Should We Stay or Should We Go: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Startup Wife: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Double Blind: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Foregone: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Libertie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Abundance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Run the Tides: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dear Miss Metropolitan: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fight Night Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lurkers Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The End of the Day Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Milk Blood Heat: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Second Place: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Away Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5What Storm, What Thunder: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vera: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pleasing Hour Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5What Could Be Saved: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Palace of the Drowned: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Five Wounds: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cold Millions: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mecca Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Impostor Syndrome: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gold: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Light Perpetual: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Monticello: Fiction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Literary Fiction For You
Demon Copperhead: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stardust Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: A Hunger Games Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hunger Games Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Poisonwood Bible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Yellowface: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tom Lake: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Measure: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Parable of the Sower Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Covenant of Water Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Kindred Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Dutch House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Picture of Dorian Gray: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The House in the Cerulean Sea Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Name of the Wind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Road Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hate U Give Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Their Eyes Were Watching God Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of The Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Secrets of Happiness
Rating: 3.833333431372549 out of 5 stars
4/5
51 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I had read Silber's previous award winnng book "Improvement" and had enjoyed it. This book uses the same interconnected thread that many authors have been using. In the case of this book the structure did not add to the overall quality of the book. There are 7 chapters told by 6 narrators. Ethan, a gay lawyer in New York, opens and closes the book. In each chapter we have a 1st person narrative. Ethan when he is around thirty discovers that his father, Gil, who is a clothing manufacturer and spends lots of time in Thailand has a 2nd family that he has installed in Queens( a Thai woman and 2 children). His wife is shocked and divorces him. I found the whole reaction to the father by his children and wife not as harsh as it should have been. This sets the tone for the book. It moves into the lives of people connected to Gil such as his other family and then as the book goes on the characters are very loosely connected. It is as if this is a short story collection but presented as a novel. I found the possibilities of the 2 family's much more interesting than the stories that followed. I enjoy family fiction because it allows me to see how people in circumstances totally different than mine live. I am not really sure that the book made a strong argument for the relationship of money to happiness or if it just told a story about how many people live. It was an easy read and many other reviewers thought more highly about the book than me.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I read Joan Silber's amazing collection of interwoven stories, Ideas of Heaven, many years ago and feel in love with her writing. Since then, she has rarely disappointed, and her latest collection is no exception. Comprised of seven chapters, six narrators recount incidents from their lives. The narrators, in one way or another, have crossed paths, and as they tell their stories, the connections between them--some significant, some just passing--resonate, creating a community of which they may not even be aware. The first and last chapters are narrated by Ethan, a young gay man whose security was shattered when he learned that his father had a second family and other children. In between, the threads are picked up by one of those other children, by brothers and sisters, by past and present lovers, by distant acquaintances. It's a clever structure, but it also has a purposeAs each tells his or her story, we sense life's pain and disappointments, but there are moments of joy and epiphany as well, often coming in the midst of the most mundane circumstances. One of the things I loved most about Ideas of Heaven was the subtle spirituality beneath the surface, and I was left with the same feeling in reading Secrets of Happiness. I'm not a "spiritual" person in the usual sense. I'm not a churchgoer or a prayer or a believer in some big daddy in the sky who controls everything. I don't meditate or palm crystals or believe in reincarnation. This world, like it or not, is what we've got, but Silber lets us know that it's enough. And that may be the real secret of happiness.The characters are wonderful, both people we feel we know and unique in their individuality. As usual, Silber's writing is carefully crafted, witty, insightful, subtle. There's a moment of surprise for me in each of the stories, a moment when, as I'm reading what seems to be a perfectly ordinary story, I'm stunned, stopped in my tracks. I'd say it was like being struck by a lightning bolt, but it's more like finding you've been sitting in the middle of a slow-moving flood that has suddenly risen above your head. Perhaps the word I used above is best: epiphany. Silber's books always teach me a lot about the world we live in, and they always teach me a lot about myself. It's rare for me to finish a book and not only keep thinking about it but want to read it again, and soon.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I had expected to enjoy this one more than I actually did. That might have to do with the fact that I was expecting a novel about a family who learn that the husband/father actually has another family with a Thai woman. That story was only covered in the first and last chapters of the book. The remaining chapters consist of short stories which are slightly interconnected - some are about people mentioned in previous stories or a friend or relative of someone in one of the stories. Some of the stories I enjoyed, others not so much. I didn't feel very connected to any of the people in the book, probably due to the fact that I hadn't spent much time with each of them before moving on to another chapter involving someone different. Each of the stories did, however, have a connecting theme - the search for happiness.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If you think you will find the answer to finding happiness in this book, its possible, but don’t count on it. Silber’s characters are not all successful in their search. Although we never hear from the central character in the book, we know he’s involved in the various stories. He manufactures women’s clothing and often travels to Thailand where he has a Thai mistress and family—actually NOT living in Thailand, but not far from his legal family’s home in Manhatten. To give you a sample of the interconnected stories, the first story is that of Ethan, a son of the first marriage. To say it a sprawling novel really doesn’t do it justice, and like most of our lives the stories are about our relationships with money and love.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What do we need to be happy? Love? Money? Work? Family? Joan Silber takes on the question with her usual deft touch here, though without ever addressing it head on. Beginning with Ethan, a young Manhattan lawyer who discovers that his father has a second family, Silber unspools a web of lovers, siblings, parents, and children, from Greenwich Village to Bangkok, whose searches for fulfillment ripple outward in unexpected ways. From the entanglements of Ethan’s half brothers in Queens to his new boyfriend’s dying ex, whose sister watches them care for him warily even as she rekindles an old flame, to a young filmmaker living with her mother’s regrets and her sister’s capriciousness, each set of choices—infidelity, caretaking, the rejection of parents’ values and money, the work to build an extended family based on love and loyalty—affects the others in ways both subtle and large. Silber moves easily in and out of her characters’ heads; the novel is deceptively airy yet, given a reflective reading, has an ethical center without the shortcut of easy morality.