Joan Silber

"The novel begins with the character of Ethan, a lawyer living in New York City who tells us the story of his family's life just as they learn his father - a textile manufacturer who spent long trips throughout Asia - has fathered a secret family from a woman he met on one of his trips and set up in a house in Queens. From here, we move to different related characters as the novel expands outward to the woman, her sons, a few surprise relations, some...

"A love story of our time." -Ha Jin, author of The Boat Rocker Once upon a very recent time in New York City, there was a couple, two ordinary single people who met the way city people meet. Even though mismatched, they fell in love. And after some hesitations they decided, finally, to marry-only to look up and find their world caving in around them. Sexy, vivacious Elisa, of the miniskirts and tiny T-shirts, still in art school and just coming...

An anthology of short fiction explores the issue of human longings and how sex and religion have become parallel forms of comfort and dedication, linking each story with the following a minor element in one tale that becomes a major theme of the next.

In My Other Life is grounded in New York, and Joan Silber's prose has all the traits of an urban sensibility: confidence, wit, individual style, and an emotional distance that keeps the despair of city life in perspective. Each story focuses on the surprising reversal that separates an old life from the new. And, recovering from the glories of bad habits in their twenties, Silber's people move through decades of sobering conclusions and elating accidents....