“Secrets of Happiness” looks like a series of linked stories, but it’s more like a roulette wheel in print: Each chapter spins to some other character in a large circle of possibilities. It takes only a moment to get your bearings, and the disappointment of leaving one narrator behind is instantly replaced by the delight of meeting a new one . . . These stories unfurl with such verbal verisimilitude that they’re like late-night phone calls from old friends. Every imperative page trips along with the wry wisdom of ordinary speech—the illusion of artlessness that only the most artful writers can create . . . Their stories—like ours—all revolve around money and love. Can a check ever come with no strings attached? Who cares enough to nurse the dying? Who deserves the inheritance? These tales turn on such questions, as though Silber were holding a coin in the light, testing the mettle of each grasping, grateful, generous soul . . . In quiet, surprising moments, ‘Secrets of Happiness’ suggests something lies beyond the columns of loss and gain, something one character calls ‘the sunny opacity that love can induce.'”
– Ron Charles, The Washington Post