Secrets of Happiness

Secrets of Happiness
Joan Silber
RRP:
NZ$ 45.00
Our Price:
NZ$ 36.00
Hardback
h216 x 138mm - 288pg
5 Aug 2021 UK
International import eta 7-19 days
9781911630081
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
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 travelling abroad, returning much changed, just as her now ex-husband falls ill. 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 struck about love and money continue to shape all their lives. As Ethan finds himself caught in a love triangle of his own, the interwoven fates of these two households elegantly unfurl to touch many other figures, revealing secret currents of empathy and loyalty, the bounty of improvised families and the paradoxical ties that weave through life' s rich contours. With a generous and humane spirit, Secrets of Happiness elucidates the ways people marshal the resources at hand in an effort to find joy.
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 *
Joan Silber is the author of nine books of fiction. Her last book, Improvement, was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award and was listed as one of the year' s best books by the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Newsday, the Seattle Times and Kirkus Reviews. She lives in New York. Find out more at joansilber. net.
Status: Indent title, imported to order
ISBN-13: 9781911630081
Published: 5 Aug 2021
Published In: United Kingdom
Imprint: Allen & Unwin
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Format: Hardback
Height: 216mm
Width: 138mm
Pages: 288

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