Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is my book club's May selection!
This book is a hard one to pin down because its plot is really about the nature of humans, life itself, and how we're all intertwined in infinite ways.
Simple right?
But despite its heavy themes and grand plot, this book was a bit of a quick read. I didn't feel weighed down when as I was going through it. I attribute that to Shapiro's amazing writing skills. She is able to weave a great story and narrative while also exploring grand themes and plot points. We are able to get sucked into the characters' lives and issues on a micro scale while seeing the macro issues as well.
The story jumps through time, and it takes some head space to keep track of where you are to make sure you're not lost, but it didn't take away from the story for me. The various chapters each showed a unique episode in the two main families' lives that made up their lives and contributed to the story as a whole. Each was important in its own way and I came to enjoy the episodic nature of the book. And it all wrapped up nicely in the end.
At the end, we also get a little of the pandemic in the story, but I didn't mind. It felt appropriate.
Overall, Dani Shapiro's first fiction work in years is a hit for me. She's a talented author, in both nonfiction and fiction, as this book proves!
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment