Signal Fires
By Dani Shapiro
240 pages
Megan’s Review
Quick summary
An unexpected fatal accident leaves a close-knit family reeling in a powerful, beautifully written novel.
What’s it about?
The family saga begins with a deadly car accident on a summer night in 1985 in a suburb of NYC. Sarah Wilf, a 17-year old has been drinking, takes the back seat of the family car and lets her younger, inexperienced 15-year old brother, Theo, take the wheel. His crush, Misty, rides shotgun. Theo crashes the car into a tree in the family’s front yard, killing Misty. Sarah and Theo’s father, Dr. Benjamin Wilf, tries unsuccessfully to save Misty, after which, to protect Theo, Sarah claims she was the person driving. The details of the accident become a family secret never again discussed. The author then takes us through a looping, non-linear chronology to various points from 1970 to 2020, deftly folding together the events that define the lives of the Wilfs and exploring the haunting effects of their secret. Years later, Waldo Schenkman, a lonely, 10-year-old budding astronomer befriends his aging neighbor, Dr. Wilf. Waldo shares his obsession with the stars and the interconnectedness of constellations, teaching the doctor about the beauty of the world.
What did it make me think about?
How a careless lapse in judgment can make things can go terribly wrong in an instant. (“There should be a word for the moment just before heartbreak, when the air quivers with all that is about to come.”) The destructive and reverberating power of family secrets and guilt and untended wounds. The interconnectedness of all things and people over time and space. (“Ben Wilf has come to believe that we live in loops rather than one straight line; that the air itself is made not only of molecules but of memory; that these loops form an invisible pattern; that past, present and future are part of this pattern…”)
Should I read it?
A bittersweet story told in radiant prose about grief and loss. The characters are complex and beautifully drawn, believably and perceptively rendered across the various stages of their lives. Some may find the novel’s mystical elements too obvious and overdone, but I found them enchanting. I love this book.
Quote.
“It was comforting, somehow, sitting beside the small boy who was able to navigate their precise location in the vastness. The stars, rather than appearing distant and implacable, seemed to be signal fires in the dark, mysterious fellow travelers lighting a path; one hundred thousand luminous presences beckoning from worlds away. See us. We are here. We have always been here. We will always be here.”
Megan’s Review
Quick summary
An unexpected fatal accident leaves a close-knit family reeling in a powerful, beautifully written novel.
What’s it about?
The family saga begins with a deadly car accident on a summer night in 1985 in a suburb of NYC. Sarah Wilf, a 17-year old has been drinking, takes the back seat of the family car and lets her younger, inexperienced 15-year old brother, Theo, take the wheel. His crush, Misty, rides shotgun. Theo crashes the car into a tree in the family’s front yard, killing Misty. Sarah and Theo’s father, Dr. Benjamin Wilf, tries unsuccessfully to save Misty, after which, to protect Theo, Sarah claims she was the person driving. The details of the accident become a family secret never again discussed. The author then takes us through a looping, non-linear chronology to various points from 1970 to 2020, deftly folding together the events that define the lives of the Wilfs and exploring the haunting effects of their secret. Years later, Waldo Schenkman, a lonely, 10-year-old budding astronomer befriends his aging neighbor, Dr. Wilf. Waldo shares his obsession with the stars and the interconnectedness of constellations, teaching the doctor about the beauty of the world.
What did it make me think about?
How a careless lapse in judgment can make things can go terribly wrong in an instant. (“There should be a word for the moment just before heartbreak, when the air quivers with all that is about to come.”) The destructive and reverberating power of family secrets and guilt and untended wounds. The interconnectedness of all things and people over time and space. (“Ben Wilf has come to believe that we live in loops rather than one straight line; that the air itself is made not only of molecules but of memory; that these loops form an invisible pattern; that past, present and future are part of this pattern…”)
Should I read it?
A bittersweet story told in radiant prose about grief and loss. The characters are complex and beautifully drawn, believably and perceptively rendered across the various stages of their lives. Some may find the novel’s mystical elements too obvious and overdone, but I found them enchanting. I love this book.
Quote.
“It was comforting, somehow, sitting beside the small boy who was able to navigate their precise location in the vastness. The stars, rather than appearing distant and implacable, seemed to be signal fires in the dark, mysterious fellow travelers lighting a path; one hundred thousand luminous presences beckoning from worlds away. See us. We are here. We have always been here. We will always be here.”
