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Published Oct 2022
240 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A "gripping" new novel (People) from the bestselling author of Inheritance: On a summer night in 1985, three teenagers have been drinking. One of them gets behind the wheel of a car, and, in an instant, everything changes.
Signal Fires opens on a summer night in 1985. Three teenagers have been drinking. One of them gets behind the wheel of a car, and, in an instant, everything on Division Street changes. Each of their lives, and that of Ben Wilf, a young doctor who arrives on the scene, is shattered. For the Wilf family, the circumstances of that fatal accident will become the deepest kind of secret, one so dangerous it can never be spoken.
On Division Street, time has moved on. When the Shenkmans arrive—a young couple expecting a baby boy—it is as if the accident never happened. But when Waldo, the Shenkmans' brilliant, lonely son who marvels at the beauty of the world and has a native ability to find connections in everything, befriends Dr. Wilf, now retired and struggling with his wife's decline, past events come hurtling back in ways no one could ever have foreseen.
In Dani Shapiro's first work of fiction in fifteen years, she returns to the form that launched her career, with a riveting, deeply felt novel that examines the ties that bind families together—and the secrets that can break them apart. Signal Fires is a work of haunting beauty by a masterly storyteller.
BookBrowse Review
"There are some touching descriptions and insightful portrayals of interpersonal relationship, but the book is marred by heavy-handed narration and a penchant for overtelling. For example, the book's central theme—that everything is connected—gets rehashed repeatedly instead of being allowed to emerge organically through the story. Meanwhile, the actual connections that link characters and events in the story can feel contrived, veering too far into the mystical to be credible, with altogether too many references to past and present selves merging, radiant beams of light, fields of energy, and invisible threads weaving people together."
Other Reviews
"Stunning in depth and breadth, this luminous examination of loss and acceptance, furtiveness and reliability, abandonment and friendship ultimately blazes with profound revelations...Like creating an intricate origami puzzle, Shapiro folds together the events that define these lives over decades, focusing on specific interludes to divulge old secrets or bury new ones. Returning to fiction after touching readers with her courageous and probing memoirs, including Inheritance, Shapiro delivers keen perceptions about family dynamics via fictional characters that exude a rare combination of substance and delicacy." - Booklist (starred review)
"Shapiro, who made a splash with her gripping genealogy memoir, Inheritance (2019), returns to fiction with this moody, meditative novel, her 11th book...Wears its philosophical intentions on its sleeve; well-developed characters and their interesting careers seal the deal." - Kirkus Reviews
"[A] beautiful exploration of the connections between two families and the reverberations from a teenager's lie...Shapiro imagines in luminous prose how each of the characters' lives might have gone if things had turned out differently. It's an intriguing meditation." - Publishers Weekly
"Creator of the popular podcast Family Secrets, acclaimed novelist/memoirist Shapiro writes with compassion and a deep understanding of the damage that secrets wreak. Shapiro's first novel in 15 years was well worth the wait." - Library Journal
"The celebrated memoirist returns to fiction with a lyrical and propulsive novel in which a horrific crash leaves a young woman dead and the driver's family closing ranks around him. The secrets and cover-ups that result will haunt the family for generations to come, but it's the richly drawn characters and moody atmospheric that make the book hard to put down." - Oprah Daily
"Signal Fires is an urgent and compassionate meditation on memory, time, and space. Shapiro has created a world that's as wrenching as it is wondrous." - Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being
"Signal Fires cuts a gleaming window into our alternate lives so meticulously and gloriously that it is quite nearly a primer on how to live not only in the present, but in the past and future as well. Shapiro has crafted a stunning future classic." - Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women
"Signal Fires is a haunting, moving, and propulsive exploration of family secrets." - Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion
This information about Signal Fires was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Michael Maren
Dani Shapiro is a bestselling novelist and memoirist and host of the podcast Family Secrets (now in its sixth season). Her work has been featured in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue, and Time. She has taught at Columbia and New York University and is the co-founder of the Sirenland Writers Conference. Her novel Signal Fires was published by Knopf in October.
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