Signal Fires is a great novel, but it's also something rarer: a good novel, one that shines with deep truths about what it is to love someone, lose them, and live on

A stunning future classic

Tender and philosophical

Gripping

Lyrically examines the ways a single event can alter many lives for ever . . . wonderful

Shapiro weaves a compulsive, tender narrative that flits between viewpoints and time frames in its quest for connectivity

A wonderful novel, full of insight and compassion

Haunting, moving, and propulsive

Beautifully written, Dani Shapiro explores time, memory and our human interconnectedness to create a moving portrayal of the ripple effect one event and one person's actions can have on many lives

Beautiful... a family saga, but a book about destiny too, the unavoidable push and pull of choice and chance

Lyrical and propulsive . . . hard to put down

Masterful and poignant

Wise, deeply perceptive, suffused with light

Signal Fires is an urgent and compassionate meditation on memory, time, and space. In Shapiro's elegant convergence of narrative threads, she creates a world that's as wrenching as it is wondrous

A subtle, compelling and expansive book about family, love and the devastating power of secrets. I love the way Shapiro writes relationships, the ambition of having so many concurrent narratives and the deft way she draws her characters.

Beautifully composed

Shapiro's characters' interweaving stories grapple with the ways that guilt festers when it's not dealt with - and, ultimately, the unexpected paths that can lead to healing and redemption

A powerful work that delves into the consequences of a long-hidden lie . . . Shapiro's novel offers the comfort of a view from the stars

Gripping from the start... beautifully written, Shapiro explores time, memory and our human interconnectedness to create a tender, moving portrayal of the ripple effect one event and on person's actions can have on many lives

The queen of family secrets

What a treat. I don't know of anyone who writes about family with the same generous understanding

Gripping, unexpected and beautiful

Wears its philosophical intentions on its sleeve; well-developed characters and their interesting careers seal the deal.

The wisdom and beauty in these seamlessly-braided narratives form a singular emotional experience for the reader that is both immediate and everlasting.

A beautiful exploration of the connections between two families and the reverberations from a teenager's lie...Shapiro imagines in luminous prose how each of the characters' lives might have gone if things had turned out differently...an intriguing meditation

Shapiro writes with compassion and a deep understanding of the damage that secrets wreak

Shapiro returns...with a beautiful exploration of the connections between two families and the reverberations from a teenager's lie... Shapiro imagines in luminous prose how each of the characters' lives might have gone if things had turned out differently. It's an intriguing meditation.

Shapiro delivers keen perceptions about family dynamics via fictional characters that exude a rare combination of substance and delicacy. Stunning in depth and breadth, this luminous examination of loss and acceptance, furtiveness and reliability, abandonment and friendship ultimately blazes with profound revelations

Gorgeous

Lyrical and sharp

Signal Fires is an exquisite portrait of two families, and a testament to the human capacity to experience love and loss. With wry tenderness it shows how we are all connected through time in ways that are at once beautiful, mysterious, profound and full of hope.

A book about desire and about love, about where these emotions meet and part and sometimes interlace in inescapable ways. But it is about so much more: these characters, for instance, painted by Warrell's uniquely masterful brush so that even in small moments they seem entirely whole, entirely alive...a classic in the making.

Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm,' proclaimed Jelly Roll Morton, and Warrell plays her exceptional first novel with plenty of rhythm and tenderness, delivered in brisk, mordantly gorgeous language that has its own natural flow.... A highly recommended story of love and life that makes beautiful music.

A capacious and sweeping telling in which writing about the past is a way of also staring dead on at the present.

Victory City stands out as one of the year's literary highlights... that feels like an instant classic.

Rushdie is an assured storyteller at the height of his powers, revealing once again how important India is as a fount of his imagination.

Victory City is one of Rushdie's very best novels. It is also a luminous, italicised, vibrant reminder of the possibilities of free expression and of the untrammelled imagination. In this instance, the medium is indeed the message.

Victory City can, in many ways, be read as an entertaining jaunt through Indian history, though it is history through the kaleidoscopic and sweeping lens of a fairy tale... this brilliantly magical tale.

This sweeping, intricately crafted fairy tale is underscored by very human characters and Rushdie's signature wit.

A grand entertainment, in a tale with many strands, by an ascended master of modern legends.

Rushdie's magical style unfurls wonders.

Rushdie's Victory City is another fabulous novel set in his native India... He's a master who never forgets that the main goal of a storyteller is to entertain rather than educate or pontificate.

Rushdie is, above all else...one of the most powerful defenders of story we have... Victory City is a victory for Rushdie - and for every reader who enters its gates.

Rushdie succeeds in creating a kind of incantatory prose that befits the fabulist nature of the story... he can enchant readers like few other writers.

This is a man at his full-strength, high-tar best - with his deeply humane worldview, his brilliance at set-pieces and, above all, the thrilling wildness of his imagination on irresistible display.

With its carousel of shifting politics and history, Victory City is Rushdie's most textured and triumphant wonder tale yet.

Utterly enchanting.

Rushdie's return to magic, myth, and India's ancient stories is dazzling. With mercurial prose and vivid renderings, Rushdie never loses us in Victory City's convolutions, but instead builds our trust to travail the many grand events of Pampa's imagined empire.

A rich, dramatic saga... The many moments of comedy...show Salman Rushdie's storytelling skills and his endearing sense of playfulness... the main feeling the reader gets is of a storyteller enjoying himself.

Rushdie is an expert at mixology; he's the DJ Shadow of text with references and allusions to high and low culture from Finnegans Wake to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon... a well-told tale that gets bums on seats.

There's a magical thread of storytelling running through the veins of each character we meet in this book... a joy to read.

A work of great imagination... In Victory City the power of the written word and of the storyteller remain triumphant.

Rushdie’s sheer love of fiction is irrepressible.

A wonderfully entertaining literary hybrid

Victory City is Salman Rushdie at his imaginative best… sweeping the reader on a journey that feels epic in a mere 320 pages