Shapiro’s new novel explores family secrets
For a novel that starts with a crash — literally — Dani Shapiro’s 11th book, “Signal Fires,” turns out to be a quieter and more philosophical work than its dramatic, tragic opening might suggest.
Readers who know the author’s oeuvre will recognize its focus on family secrets, a subject Shapiro explored in a very personal way in her best-selling 2019 memoir “Inheritance.” (The book inspired Shapiro’s podcast, “Family Secrets,” which examines parallel stories in the lives of guests and listeners.) Also vintage Shapiro are the novel’s metaphysical themes: the intersections of time and memory, the reality of the human soul and the unexpected bonds between strangers.
In “Signal Fires,” the secret that has so profoundly defined the Wilf family is “the deepest kind of family secret, one so dangerous that it will never be spoken.” The first section of the book, dated Aug. 27, 1985, reveals the truth as it unfolded at the time: Fifteen-year-old Theo Wilf is driving his mother’s
Buick; his older sister Sarah, who has a license but who has been drinking, is in the back seat; her friend Misty Zimmerman is riding shotgun. Theo crashes the car into the huge oak tree in the Wilf’s front yard and after their father, Dr. Benjamin Wilf, rushes out to attend to Misty, unconscious and bleeding, Sarah claims to have been the one driving.
There’s more to know about how that evening unfolded, but the next section of the book skips all the way to 2010 and turns to other matters. It is Ben Wilf’s last night living in the family house, his home of 40 years, though we’re not yet told where he’s going or why. We do find out, via descriptions of boxes to be sent to “S.W.” and “T.W.”, that Sarah now lives in Santa Monica, Theo in Brooklyn.
On this cold December night, 74-year-old Ben looks out the window and sees Waldo Shenkman, the 10-year-old boy who lives across the street. They’ve been waving to each other for several days, but this time they open the windows and Waldo asks Ben to meet him at what he calls “the magic tree.” There Waldo shows him an app on his tablet called Star Walk. It can display the night sky as it was at any point in history, and over any particular place on Earth.
This app, Waldo explains, comforts him when he thinks bad thoughts, putting his troubles in perspective. Surprising himself, technophobic Ben experiences the wonder of the app, too. “From this distance, it seems possible that it’s all happening at once: this life, that life — an immeasurable number of lives all playing themselves out in parallel motion,” he thinks. “He is at once a newborn at the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital, a kid playing stickball on Classon Avenue, a bar mitzvah boy all squirmy in his new suit, stumbling through the words of his Torah portion. He is a college student, a sleepless medical intern, a young husband. He is watching his daughter’s birth. He is moving with his young family to Division Street. He is hearing his son’s first lusty wail.”
These ideas, that everything is connected and that all versions of a person over time coexist at every moment, are the heart of “Signal Fires.” In the subsequent sections of the book, Shapiro skips back-and-forth through the years, stopping at 1970, 1999, 2014, 2020 (but not in that order), also returning to 1985, having her omniscient narrator peek through the perspectives of Theo, Sarah, Ben and his wife, Mimi, Waldo and Waldo’s father.
Gradually the details of how the tragedy and the secrecy surrounding it shaped, or more precisely, deformed, the lives of the Wilfs are filled in. The structure of the book affords Shapiro plenty of room to build out her characters’ destinies and inner lives. Their careers are a particular pleasure: Theo becomes a celebrity chef, Sarah a successful screenwriter, and each of these worlds is fleshed out with alluring authenticity.
Given how the book toys with the idea of time, it is fitting that it ends not with how everything turned out but with how everything started — back in 1970, at a moment of near-perfect wholeness for the Wilf family, before life has its way. “Signal Fires” doesn’t shy away from loss but seeks to balance grief with grace. Like Waldo’s app, Shapiro’s novel offers the comfort of a view from the stars.