"Secrets of Happiness," by Joan Silber

I have enjoyed Joan Silber’s fiction in the past, so when I saw that she had a new novel, “Secrets of Happiness” (Counterpoint, 2021), I immediately obtained a copy. The story is mainly set in New York City; its characters include some with roots in Thailand (especially) and Nepal. The main character, Ethan, finds that his father has long had a second family, a Thai woman and her two children, also living in New York. Then Ethan himself becomes involves in a triangle, as he and his male lover stay with his lover’s former longtime lover to take care of him through his serious illness and then death. So there are several overlapping stories, and each character has the chance to give her or his thoughts and feelings, in alternating chapters. This reminded me of Silber's two most recent books, “Fools” and “Improvement” (see my posts of 6/11/13 and 2/11/18), which also have separate semi-interlocking chapters for different characters and stories. The chapters in “Fools” are the most separate, almost like independent short stories, some of which happen to feature the same characters. The chapters in “Improvement” are more directly connected. And the chapters in “Secrets of Happiness, although each is titled with the name of the character through whose eyes we are being told the story, are even more explicitly connected. It is if these three books traverse a continuum from a related short story collection to an almost-novel. I savored all three of these books, but I liked the current one, “Secrets,” the best, and I think that is partly because of the more explicit connections among the stories. Perhaps I am old-fashioned in this preference. But I do think that because of it, the novel, its plot(s), and its characters will stay with me longer than those of the other two books. In any case, as evidenced in all three books (and in her earlier books that I read before I started this blog), Silber is gifted at portraying characters, and at illuminating the often-tangled relationships among them.