Meet the Author: Joan Silber

Credit: Shari Diamond

Joan Silber is an American novelist and short story writer. She won the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction and the 2018 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her novel Improvement. Joan's latest book is Secrets of Happiness which was published in the UK in August by Allen & Unwin. You can find Joan's books on our catalogue or borrow the eBook on OverDrive.

1. Who were your heroes and influences as you were growing up and when did you first realise that you wanted to write?

I was always an intense reader—I loved being transported by the page. “The house could burn down,” my mother would say, “and you’d have your nose in a book.” (She was a reader herself but, daughter of immigrants, she worried about my not being practical). I loved Little Women and read every book by Louisa May Alcott. Her books have preachy sections, but I loved having the moral lives of children taken seriously. My father died (of natural causes) when I was five, so I had a sort of Victorian childhood, which I was thrilled to see mirrored in books. I was always secretly writing poems, which I would hide. I think I wanted to be a writer from quite a young age, though my announced and genuine wish was to be a movie star.

2. What is your writing routine? What does a typical writing day look like?

Lots of writers prefer morning, but I use that part of the day for walking the dog, exercising, doing errands. I start work sometime after lunch (sometimes I delay by having extra desserts), and I work until dinner. I live in a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, so my study—which is really very nice—is on one side of the bedroom, and my dog Lucille (she’s fourteen) is usually lying under the desk. Some days at the desk are frustrating and some are great, but it’s not hard, at this stage in my life, to show up. I had much more resistance when I was young.

3. You use a relay narrative with connected characters and changing perspectives. How did you develop that style?

I began it five books ago, with a collection called Ideas of Heaven (which is going be re-issued in the UK next summer). I wrote one story, then wanted to give a character who behaves badly in it his own story, and then another tale (about a Renaissance poet) came out of his. I liked having a minor character in one story become major in the next, and the tellers circled the same crucial ideas.

The form has become more novel-like over time. It has given me a way to use the intimacy of very close scenes while placing them on a wider canvas — to be small and big both at once. I do like getting different voices to tell their histories, not giving one viewpoint the sole authority. Reviewers have several times quoted a great line from John Berger — “Never again will a single story be told as if it were the only one.” I’m very happy to have the work thought of this way. Maybe now more than ever.

4. Secrets of Happiness has just been published here in the UK. How did it take shape and can you tell us a little about it?

A friend told me a story about a couple she’d once known— the wife discovered, through a paternity suit slipped under the door, that her husband of three decades had a whole other secret family. After the divorce, she opted to travel to the very country in Asia this family was from. I loved the irony of the travel in this story, and the deeper notes it struck—fiction is so often about the force of changed perspective.

I knew I wanted to also follow the second family (I chose Thailand as their country because I’ve had an interest in the role of Buddhism in the culture and have done short-term teaching there.) One advantage of the infidelity in the plot was that it gave me a way to split the line of the story; the husband’s “other” sons had their own web of connections. And I got to keep adding more byways — New York, Nepal, Cambodia. This is what I like to do as a writer — I like a long chain of causality, and I like to keep generating characters whose fates connect across a wide span.

5. What is the key message you would like readers to take away from Secrets of Happiness?

I thought of the title as more or less ironic — I don’t have the secrets to happiness (and could sell billions more copies if I did). I think of Abby - whom we first meet as the betrayed wife - as the figure who comes the closest to what I’d want readers to take home. At the end of the book, she is lighting a memorial candle for the now-deceased husband from whom she’s long divorced. Her son thinks - “she had plenty of reasons not to wish my father well,” but she buys a candle every year because “it was what a serious person did, took a longer view. If my father, wherever he was, was not grateful, she didn’t take it personally. She thought that question was a mistake. She lit the flame before sundown out of a larger project.”

6. Is there anything you can share with us about your latest project?

It’s a novel and here’s what I have so far. A man is asked by his daughter what’s the worst thing he’s ever done, and he remembers (but doesn’t tell) a time when he betrayed his best friend, when they were young and both using hard drugs. He has never spoken of this to anyone — though for decades he’s talked in his head to the friend. We eventually find out what actually happened to the friend, but in the mean time we hear about the friend’s former girlfriend, now a successful actress, who’s currently lauded for a part she played as a woman smoking opium in 1930s Hong Kong. Remorse and its uses will play a role in the plot.

7. You have experienced success and setbacks in your writing life. What advice would you give to any aspiring writers reading this?

My first book did well (won an award), people were underwhelmed by the second, and then there was a thirteen-year gap between the second and third. I call it my thirteen years in the desert. It’s a story that now has a happy ending, but who knew? I think I changed during that time in ways that ultimately helped the work. My advice to struggling writers is - cultivate equanimity. Try to resist bad advice. Ask more of yourself.

8. What is on your 'to read' pile at the moment?

It’s cheering to always have things I want to read. How Much of These Hills is Gold, by C. Pam Zhang. The Storm, by Arif Anwar. One Kind Favor, by Kevin McIlvoy. The Sweetest Fruits, by Monique Truong. Summerwater, by Sarah Moss.

9. Can you tell us one thing about yourself that your readers may not know?

My escapist reading is cookbooks. I’m a very decent cook, but I always say I can read better than I can cook. I hold with the theory that a recipe is at least a story that always has a happy ending.