This started out as a 5 star book with a really interesting story, and then kept switching characters, each who had less interesting and compelling stories than the last. All of them had a mild connection with each other, but I just wanted the story of the book that I started reading. I see in the acknowledgments section that each chapter originally was published in different magazines as a short story, and that's exactly what this book felt like. ( )

I 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. ( )

I 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 purpose

As 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. ( )

I 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. ( )

If 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. ( )