Dani Shapiro

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

”What never fail to draw me in, however, are secrets. Secrets within families. Secrets we keep out of shame, or self-protectiveness, or denial. Secrets and their corrosive power. Secrets we keep from one another in the name of love.” (Page 29)

In this age when nobody really has secrets anymore and your life is an open book, where e mails are hacked and stolen and possibly revealed to an exhausted public, where people seem to take pictures of every possible part of their bodies and share show more them with (supposedly) loved ones only to see them reproduced for that same drained apathetic public, we probably shouldn’t be surprised that something a college student agreed to back in the sixties would come back to haunt him today.

Dani Shapiro is a writer and a devout Jew, brought up in New Jersey by her Jewish parents in 1962. She had a close, loving relationship with her devout Jewish father who was killed in a car accident when she was in her early twenties. Dani now has a husband and a teenage son of her own and sees her world turned upside down when she submits her DNA sample to Ancestry.com and blithely opens the e mail that contains some shocking results.
This is a gripping memoir from an accomplished writer who is able to convey her feelings of grief, shock, anger, acceptance and love when she finds that her father is not who she believes him to be. But in the end, maybe that isn’t what’s important.

An important read at a time when we’re all very interested to see where we come from and who we’re related to it made me fairly satisfied that I opted to not see my DNA matches or be listed as a match on Ancestry. Very highly recommended. show less

This is the first book I have read by Dani Shapiro, but it won't be the last. I was so absorbed in 'Signal Fires' that I read it in just a few days. I loved the book I read before it, and often I hesitate to start the next one. I'm glad I didn't this time.

This is the story of two families, the Wilfs and the Shenkmans. It takes place over 50 years, following the plot non-chronologically from the perspectives of each character. Dr. Ben Wilf and his wife Mimi seem to have it all: the house of show more their dreams and two great kids. But everything is thrown into turmoil when teenagers Theo and Sarah are in an automobile crash that takes the life of their passenger. Although the incident is officially ruled an accident, each family member is keeping guilty secrets that affect the rest of their lives.

Years later, a young couple, the Shenkmans, move in across the street. Neither family pays much attention to the other, but three chance meetings over the years create a bond between Ben and young Waldo Shenkman that will figure importantly in both of their lives.

I don't want to give away any more details. Just let me assure you that this is a remarkable, thoughtful, and moving novel that explores love, guilt, compassion, family, and the way in which we are shaped by the large and small events in our lives. It's beautifully written and now sits at the top of my Best Books of 2023 list. show less

From the first page, I believed that Dani Shapiro was presenting an honest appraisal of her search for herself and the meaning of her life. As she pretty much bares her soul and her secrets, she seems to be exposing her fears and weaknesses in an effort to face them in the light of day and better deal with them. She worries about things that haven’t happened but devises all sorts of scenarios about what might happen and then spends her time trying to prevent them from happening or prepares show more for their eventuality. She is wasting a lot of time and effort on imaginary circumstances. It can be exhausting and draining. She is plagued with insecurity. Having suffered through a near tragedy and some loss in her life, she is more susceptible to fears about them recurring; however, I believe that having escaped and/or dealt with the suffering, one usually becomes more sensitive to, and appreciates far more, the meaning of life and its value. Life is seen through the lens of experience and there is an essential feeling of gratitude for the second chance that has been given. There is a feeling that there might be a greater power out there that is controlling events, someone else pulling the strings of the human puppets.
Through various events in her life, she explains the anxiety she experiences, just from living everyday. She connects with the reader and as I began to think about my own life, I remembered how I reacted in similar circumstances. It was as if I was seeing parts of my life through the mirror of her eyes. The writing style is light but the message is deep, not trivial.
At the end of the book, Dani Shapiro is still a somewhat quasi atheist, questioning her beliefs and viewing the world through the teachings of her religious background. She has taken a spiritual journey and, although not actually practicing her Judaism devoutly, she is instead following traditions and rituals. She explores her past, hoping for self discovery, looking inward, mostly through yoga meditation. She constantly engages in soul searching in an attempt to live in the moment and find inner peace.
There are 102 flashbacks which reveal her attempts to analyze and work through her worries; she explores her relationship with her mother, her experiences regarding 9/11, her attendance at AA meetings, her son’s illness, her love for her father, and several other momentous occasions in her life.
Although at first, I wasn’t sure I would like this book as much as I did, I came to really appreciate its message. It made me stop and think about moments in my life, memories that I have not come to terms with, and helped me to view them in another light, more openly and with less sorrow and anger. Her message, throughout the book, is "live safe, live happy, live strong, live with ease". Paraphrasing from a quote in her book, “don’t live so far into the future that you lose the present”. Enjoy the moment. show less