L ifestyle /C ulture
Books: Falling Short After a
Great Start, Going Beyond
B O O KS
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
Great Premise Falls
Short Pancakes with mushroom cream sauce  grafvision / iStock / Getty Images Plus
In a medium sized-bowl,
whisk together the dry ingre-
dients (flour through onion
powder). In a second medium-sized
bowl, whisk together the egg
and milk. Pour the wet ingre-
dients into the dry ones. Whisk
until the flour disappears. If
the batter is stiff, add milk a
teaspoon at a time, whisking
briefly until combined. Don’t
overwhisk. Plenty of lumps will
remain. You’ll need to make
pancakes in two batches. In
a large skillet, melt the butter
on a medium flame. Using a
tablespoon, drop the batter
into the butter, creating silver
dollar-sized pancakes. Add
more butter at any time, if
needed. When tiny craters form in
the batter and it turns golden
around the edges, flip the
pancakes and cook them on
the other side until golden.

Move them to a platter.

Repeat the directions for
the first batch with the second.

When the second batch
of pancakes is nearly ready,
heat up the mushroom cream
sauce on a medium flame
until rewarmed. When all the
pancakes are on the platter,
pour the sauce over them.

Serve immediately.

JEWISHEXPONENT.COM CRAZY CAPRESE SALAD |
DAIRY Serves 4
⅛ cup pine nuts or blanched
slivered almonds
2 beefsteak or extra-large
tomatoes 1 large ball of mozzarella
cheese 2 clementines
2 tablespoons fresh basil
leaves Kosher salt to taste
Red wine vinegar for
drizzling Olive oil for drizzling
Place the pine nuts or
almonds on an aluminum lined
baking sheet in the toaster oven
or a standard oven. Bake at
350 degrees F. for 1-2 minutes,
or until fragrant and golden.

Nuts burn easily, so watch them
almost continuously. Reserve.

Slice the tomatoes and the
ball of mozzarella cheese on the
thin side. Peel the clementines,
discarding the peel and pith.

Arrange the tomatoes,
mozzarella and clementine
sections attractively on a
platter, letting them overlap
a little. Tuck the basil leaves
in between. Sprinkle the salad
with salt. Drizzle on the vinegar
and olive oil. Scatter the nuts
on top. Serve immediately. l
THE DECEPTION THAT
sets up the story of “Secrets of
Happiness” is revealed on page
10. The premise — after 32
years of conventional marriage
and a comfortable Upper West
Side existence, a father reveals
that he has a second family
in Queens — is so juicy, so
ripe for exploration, that one
appreciates Joan Silber’s to-the-
point-ness here.

Don’t mess around; state the
problem so we can get to the
richly dramatic consequences.

But the focus falls away
shortly afterward. Silber, a
decorated novelist who won the
2018 PEN/Faulkner Award for
Fiction, has a particular style
that she returns to in “Secrets
of Happiness,” shuff ling
through first-person-narrated
perspectives to complicate the
reader’s understanding of some
part of the larger story.

In “Improvement,” Silber
weaved her narrative with
the perspectives of a man on
Rikers Island, his girlfriend
and German smugglers who
spent a single night at the home
of the girlfriend’s aunt decades
before. In “The Size of the
World,” Silber gave center stage
to an engineer, a man who sold
that engineer some screws and
then that guy’s sister.

Writing her novels in this
way, spinning off into the
minds and stories of characters
that don’t appear at first glance
to elucidate anything about the
story at hand, Silber is able
to generate irony, to rhyme
strange narrative rhymes and
JEWISH EXPONENT
Courtesy of Counterpoint
“Secrets of Happiness”
Joan Silber
Counterpoint present new perspectives on
her own characters. Tossed-off
comments in one story become
life-altering utterances in
another; one person’s family
heirloom is another’s junk.

In exploring the fullness of
conversations, linked objects
and shared experiences, Silber
is able to examine a story from
every angle.

The risk in writing the
way Silber does is that in
those spins away from the
main narrative, Silber needs
to reassert the “why” for each
new section. Why should the
reader care about this periph-
eral character, especially if
their section doesn’t appear to
serve the main narrative?
Reading “Secrets
of Happiness,” I found myself
asking myself that far too often.

The initial chapter, narrated by
the family-franchising father’s
legitimate son, Ethan, is rich
with intrigue. Not one person
in the first family knew about
the second family! The second
family in Queens is quite a bit
poorer than the first family,
and the mother in the second
family is a Thai immigrant with
shaky English. When the father
dies and leaves behind some
serious money, everyone in the
first family aside from Ethan
is hesitant to give any to the
second family.

There’s enough there
to sustain an entire novel.

And the next section, which
switches over to a son of the
See Books, Page 22
MAY 13, 2021
21