These 'stories' follow interconnected characters. I would have probably preferred fewer voices and a longer novel. By the time I grew accustomed to a character it was over and onto the next one. The writing was decent enough and the themes had potential (even if they didn't have a lot of page-time to be developed). All in all, this was an okay if forgettable read.

It took me a while to get into these loosely interlinked series of short stories, but once I viewed them through a lens of Elizabeth Strout context - since it really is like the Olive books - it made a lot more sense and I grew to really enjoy what Silber was doing in allowing her characters to just tell you about their whole lives if they wanted to.

I loved the blurb for this, I was really excited to read it. This is a collection of short stories which all have a loose connection to each other. The first story about Ethan was really good. The rest really fell short for me and I just didn’t connect with any of the other stories. Too many characters and this wasn’t what I was expecting at all.

Rather than a novel these are stories that have a loose interconnection with the family in the opening chapters of the book. A wife finds out that her husband who travels a lot to Asia has a second family with a woman he has brought from Vietnam who the family have always known as the hostess at their favourite restaurant. I really liked this first part and wanted to know more about the first and second families and thought the prceeding chapters would be about them. However, rather like Elizabeth Strout's, Olive Kitteridge books the next chapters deal with people only very loosely connected to the family (but not in such an integrated way).It is often totally unclear how they are connected at all -it becomes a bit confusing and the author doesn't include any little details that let the reader know how they fit into the narrative. In fact, when the last chapter does go back to the original family 's eldest son, Ethan, I had to trace back to the first chapter to check he was their son.

Apart from the original two families I didn't particularly connect with any of the stories, they seemed a bit unfocused and their wasn't much revelation about the "Secrets of Happiness" to be had. Everyone seemed to live pretty joyless lives with just the odd flash of things going well and bringing some sort of fulfillment. I thought it all a bit dull and unrewarding.

What they say: Ethan, a young lawyer in New York, learns that his father has long kept a second family - a 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.

My thoughts: A well written exploration of an unusual family set up. Told from differing perspectives, sometimes people's stories connected or met up with others unexpectedly. I felt it flowed well and the characters were relatable. It was quite a gentle, understated kind of read, with humour and warmth. I would recommend.

It started of very strong with the first story and after that I was a bit let down, because I wanted to know more about this double-life situation. After that there were to many characters who I didn’t bond with. But I liked that each story had something to do with the other. The writing was excellent though.

Thank you NetGalley / Atlantic Books for providing me with this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Rather like Improvement, Joan Silber’s previous novel which explored the fallout of an accident through all that were affected by it, Secrets of Happiness looks at our yearning for happiness through the revelation of the second family of an apparently happily married man.

Ethan and Allyson took their parents’ happiness for granted until the arrival of legal demands for the maintenance of Gil’s two teenage sons, tucked away with their Thai mother in Queens. From this revelation radiates out a series of connections, some close, others tangential. The results reads like an intricately connected set of short stories; if you look closely at that jacket you'll notice it's a jigsaw which neatly sums up Silber's structure. Beginning and ending with Ethan’s narrative revealing his father’s secret life and his own discovery of quiet happiness in his forties, each character's story is narrated in their own voice, often overlapping with others in surprising ways. Silber’s characters are astutely portrayed, the baton passed from one to the other smoothly, and a pleasing thread of gentle humour runs through the novel. It ends on a satisfying, characteristically understated note.

Secrets of Happiness by Joan Silber is a novel consisting of interconnected stories told by various characters. It's about family and relationships and friendships and is very relatable. The move between different narrators is done deftly and it has made me want to go and read previous works by this author.