Signal Fires

 Signal Fires

By Dani Shapiro

This was the second of my father's annual Valentine's Day book gift. Perhaps I'm projecting here, but it

seems like a major theme of the book is finding peace during middle age. The main characters of this novel have a harder time than most. In the opening scene, two of the main characters, brother-and-sister duo Theo and Sarah, are in a car that crashes and kills a friend. Inexplicably, the family decides to never speak of the incident again, leaving the trauma to fester for decades. It manifests itself in unproductive ways. Sarah turns to alcohol, Theo up and leaves the country without telling anyone, and Mimi, the mom, develops early-onset Alzheimers. They are all eventually saved, if that is the right word for it, when their story intertwines with new neighbors across the street, the youngest of which, Waldo, is a precocious 10-year-old with a genius level IQ and an obsession with stars, the "signal fires" of the title. 

Waldo's ruminations on stars and the atoms that make them up point toward another theme: the connection between all things. We are, after all, as CSNY pointed out, star dust. Waldo continually reminds us that everything is connected, and, at times, is even able to see the past, present, and future all mixed up at once. This is what happens when he, by chance, is with Mimi when she passes away. It's an idea emphasized by the organization of the novel, which jumps back and forth in time, and includes heavy doses of foreshadowing in the sections on the past.

In this sense, the author seems to be making a claim -- or maybe grasping at? -- of immortality, that we never really die. While I found the story engaging and very well written, it is the heavy-handed way in which the author presents this idea that will make this book forgettable. It seems more like an attempt to comfort herself than an actual story; judging by the book jacket, Dani Shapiro is also in middle age and, one would suspect, grappling with questions of mortality. In her book, everything ends happily -- even death! -- and all loose ends are tied up. I wish the book had sought to raise questions more than provide answers.