Dani Shapiro

"I'd like that too," he says. But what he really means is that he'd like to take this suspended moment--the new millennium already careening inexorably forward--and roll it back instead. Back, back through layers of time to a split second when things could have gone differently, if only they had known. There must be that second, bobbing and darting in the aliveness of their shared history, unmistakable, glowing like a firefly in the darkness. If only they could pinpoint it and stop it there,

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right there, at the small but indelible spot that somehow they missed the first time around, if only, then perhaps their whole family could begin again.

Oh, who is he kidding.

Signal Fires begins with an ordinary summer evening and the accident that will follow each member of the Wilf family forever. The novel then moves backwards and forwards through time, through moments in the life of the various members of the Wilf family and then to the new family that moved in across the street, the Shenkmans, and how their lives are tied with the Wilfs in ways both small and large.

Dani Shapiro has a talent for choosing the moments to stop and linger at and knows how to bring each character to life. This is a novel of very tightly woven together short stories, each focusing on a different character and how they negotiate the events of the past and how they might move forward. It's a short book, but one that had me thinking about it when I wasn't reading it and that had me eager to pick it up again whenever I could. Shapiro writes so well and each character is so well crafted that I'm eager to read more by her. show less

When author Dani Shapiro learned that her biological father was a stranger rather than the dad she grew up with, there probably was no question that her search for information would end up as a memoir. That’s her genre.

Blonde haired, blue eyed Shapiro grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household as her parents’ only child, with an older half-sister from her father’s first marriage. All her life, she had been defending her Jewish identity when friends and strangers told her that she didn’t show more look Jewish. She also remembered spending hours in front of a mirror as a child, studying the image reflected there. It seems that, subconsciously, she agreed with those who said she didn’t look Jewish.

When an Ancestry DNA test revealed that she was, in fact, only half Jewish, the new knowledge upended her sense of identity. The search for her biological father was only a part of her quest for self-understanding. She also had questions about how much her parents understood about their fertility treatments, whether they knew about the sperm donor, and, if so, how they reached their decision to use a sperm donor and why this knowledge had been withheld from her.

The awkwardness of Shapiro’s connection with her biological father – the man who had donated sperm more than 50 years earlier and forgotten all about it – comes across in her writing. I can only imagine how unsettling it must be to see your physical traits and mannerisms reflected in a total stranger.

This book resonated with me since I read it during a time of year when my father is in my thoughts. I would be celebrating his birthday next week if he were still living. Shapiro was very young when her father died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident (the subject of another memoir). In the process of finding her biological father, she also learned more about the man who raised her and drew his memory closer. show less

There was much to like about this memoir - it was well written and thought provoking. My biggest problem with it was this sense of willful blindness that the author claims. She has authored multiple memoirs, suggesting a comfort level with digging for personal truth and yet she writes of this discovery as though it came out of left field with no warnings at all. It just didn't ring true to me. That's not to say that her experience didn't happen the way she says it did, just that it doesn't show more feel authentic. I don't doubt that the DNA evidence was a shock and maybe even more shocking, that she is part of a large crowd of people whose biology includes donor sperm or eggs. The author hints at what it means to be family, but I would have liked to have more of that - her attachment to her ancestral identity is obviously strong, but she doesn't explore many of her connections to living family. show less

Everything about this book struck a chord in me, the collage structure which winds back and forth through the years as one's mind does, the thoughts about marriage, about time. the snippets of memory, the comments on writing and teaching. I actually stalled so it wouldn't be finished. And then she concludes before a final journal entry from her honeymoon:

"Already my mind is a kaleidoscope. Years vanish. Months collapse. Time is like a tall building made of playing cards. It seems orderly show more until a strong gust of wind comes along and blows the whole thing skyward. Imagine it: an entire deck of cards soaring like a flock of birds. A song comes on the radio and now I am nursing my baby to sleep...I am...looking into his father's eyes for the first time, I am burying my own father. My mother. I am a girl watching her mother at her vanity table. I am holding M's hand a Jacob's college graduation. I am playing with my grandchildren in a house on a mountain. The phone rings. The doorbell. I understand something terrible with a thud in my heart. The plane, the car, the train, the bomb. The test results are ominous. I am wheeling M. down a corridor. We are playing golf in Arizona. We are homeless. We are living in Covent Garden, where we often attend the theater. Pick a card. Any card." show less