Signal Fires

 

Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro

Fiction

2022 Alfred A. Knopf

Finished on March 12, 2023

Rating: 5/5 (Excellent)

Publisher's Blurb:

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.

Signal Fires is the second novel of Dani Shapiro's that I've read, and I hope it won't be my last. In my pre-blogging days, I read Family History, and as best as I can remember, I enjoyed it quite well. I've also recently read and enjoyed a couple of Shapiro's memoirs (Devotion and Inheritance), so I was excited to learn that she had written another novel after more than a dozen years. I spotted a copy of the book on the new release shelf at my library and decided to ignore my huge TBR stack and give it a try. 

What a fantastic book! I fell into it from the opening lines and couldn't put it down. At the heart of the story are two families whose lives are intertwined by multiple events over the course of twenty years. Shapiro's effortless attention to detail quickly pulled me into the lives of the Wilf and Shenkman households.

These folks leave first thing in the morning, the father in a brand-new Lexus hybrid, the mother in a Prius--cars that don't make a sound--and as dusk falls they return, gliding silently into the garage, the automatic doors closing behind them. The boy doesn't play on the street the way Sarah and Theo used to. None of the neighborhood kids are ever out in their yards. They're carted around by their parents or nannies, lugging violins or cellos in their cases, dragging backpacks that weigh more than they do. They wear soccer uniforms or spanking white getups, their tiny waists wrapped in colorful karate or jujitsu belts.

The characters and setting are vivid; I could imagine not only their homes and their neighborhood in Avalon, New York, but the bitter cold of a winter snowstorm had me reaching for a warm blanket. With the exception of one character, I came to care about the entire cast, privy to their innermost thoughts thanks to alternating points of view of each family member. The way in which the lives of these two families collide held me in thrall, in spite of the nonlinear chronology. (This is not one for audio listeners, as it would be far too confusing to keep track of the characters and the fluctuating time periods.) In addition to the main plot, I enjoyed the author's imaginings of alternate scenarios for her characters' lives. I also relished the details centered around Theo's restaurants and his role as a chef.

The first of tonight's two desserts is a dense gateau au chocolat, served with a small glass of a house-made black walnut digestif, to be followed by a bite-size donut hole drizzled with caramel sauce. With a wooden spoon, he stirs the caramel. Tastes it, then adds a pinch of sea salt. These are some of his favorite moments. The low buzz of the evening winding down on the other side of the curtain. The perfection of the meal. The loneliness that he will feel in an hour, when the last of the diners has departed, when Carolos has washed the final dish, when there is nothing to do but go home--that loneliness is still far off.

Finally, I thought Shapiro did a fine job with her handling of the Covid pandemic, which could easily have been heavy-handed.

It's the start of a holiday weekend, but this year there are no holiday weekends. Instead of the explosion of July Fourth fireworks, each evening at exactly seven there is a symphony of banging pots and people leaning out from open windows to cheer in support of essential workers. This is happening not only in the five boroughs of New York City but in cities and small towns across the globe. As people line up, standing six feet apart on Malcolm X Boulevard to pick up their dinner, they are accompanied by the elemental sound of spoons banging against pots. He listens for it as he moves through the kitchen packing orders. A predictable thing in an unpredictable world. A way to measure the passage of time.

and

His daily menu lists two different prices for each dish. In both cases, he's almost giving it away. One price is for people who still have jobs. And the other is for everyone else. All day he talks with old customers and new ones, a raw quality in their voices he recognizes as gratitude. But Theo doesn't want or need anyone's gratitude. These hours in the kitchen are saving him. Somewhere along the way he had lost sight of how he began, with the simple desire to be in the kitchen with his mother, working side by side, a stained cookbook--Marcella Hazan, Julia Child, Jacques Pepin--open on the counter. He would line up all the ingredients before they began, along with measuring cups and spoons, pans, dutch oven, whatever was called for. He preferred stews with complex flavors that would simmer on the stovetop for hours. Mimi would switch on the radio as they worked, and sometimes if a song came on that she liked, she would sing along and he'd catch a glimpse of what she must have been like as a girl.

Signal Fires is a compulsive and satisfying read and one I won't quickly forget. This is one to discuss with a book group! It's a moving and thoughtful story that would be marvelous on the big screen. Highly recommend.