Singing Boy: A Novel [Hardcover]

Dennis McFarland (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2001

From the bestselling author of The Music Room, a deeply moving novel about lives changed forever in an instant of senseless violence.

On the way home from dinner in suburban Boston, Malcolm Vaughn is shot and killed by a stranger. His eight-year-old son, Harry, watches it happen. His wife, Sarah, holds Malcolm in her arms as he bleeds to death in the street.

Undone by shock and grief, Sarah retreats from the world, postponing her return to work as a research scientist and Harry's return to school. Harry appears to have come through the loss unscathed, until a troubling incident reveals his profound pain and confusion. Malcolm's best friend tries to help Sarah and Harry heal and move on, but he is struggling with his own personal crisis.

Recalling the emotional intensity of The Music Room, Singing Boy offers a close -- and often surprisingly funny -- exploration of the courage and frailties that bind these three people together. A story of sharp sorrow and persistent love, in which memory, forgiveness, and the generosities of time reshape a shattered world, it is a work of unforgettable resonance and power.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

On a March night in a quiet Boston neighborhood, Malcolm Vaughn, who is on his way home from a Historical Society dinner, is gunned down by a stranger while his wife and son watch. So begins Dennis McFarland's deeply interesting examination of grief. Demonstrating an uncanny ability to penetrate two very different psyches, the author focuses on the dead man's widow, Sarah Vaughn, and his best friend, Deckard Jones. The latter is a Vietnam veteran and former addict who's in the midst of his own unraveling as the novel begins. This blue-collar black man may seem like an unusual friend for the white, comfortably middle-class Vaughn family, yet McFarland's writing makes the relationship perfectly plausible.

It's a well-known phenomenon that a common loss doesn't necessarily bring people together. Employing a Rashomon-like alternation of voices, McFarland explores the same events from both Deckard's and Sarah's point of view. These two devastated people have nothing but good will toward each other, and both are worried about 8-year-old Harry and perplexed by his withdrawal and regression. Somehow, though, they can't avoid giving--and taking--offense.

An intensely subjective and surreal tone illuminates the interior lives of both of these characters. Sarah guiltily takes sleeping pills and muscle relaxants that make her "too groggy to drive the car and a little apprehensive in the kitchen, among sharp knives and open flames." Deckard, meanwhile, is having trouble with "a struggle for proper nouns, a tendency to leave his apartment without the keys, the habit of arriving in a room clueless about what brought him there." He's also haunted by his memories of Vietnam, a part of the novel that takes on a life of its own and leaves the reader wanting more. Indeed, there's an immediacy and an edgy humor to this side of the story that's missing from Sarah's more pastel journey. But Singing Boy is everywhere a work of unclichéd compassion, with the sometimes surprising revelation of goodness discovered in unexpected places. --Victoria Jenkins

From Library Journal

McFarland, whose first novel, The Music Room, was a major best seller, again shows his remarkable skill in detailing human emotions and sorrow. One night, Malcolm, husband of Sarah and father of eight-year-old Harry, is shot to death in front of his horrified family. McFarland is a master at getting inside a character's thoughts: the chapter in which Sarah navigates the nightmare of hospital corridors, police questioning, and the trip to the morgue is grueling in its immediacy. We soon realize that Sarah and Harry have no emotional support network. Sarah, unable to resume her work as a chemistry professor at a prestigious Boston university, turns to Malcolm's best friend, Deckard, a black Vietnam vet and recovered drug addict. But for Deckard, Malcolm's murder stirs up not only grief but also painful flashbacks of war and an abusive childhood. As Sarah and Deckard's friendship becomes strained, Harry suffers through nightmares on his own. The novel can't sustain the emotional impact of the initial chapters, but its sophisticated and subtle analysis of each character's grief and resolution is compelling. Highly recommended.
-DReba Leiding, James Madison Univ., Harrisonburg, VA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; 1st edition (March 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080506608X
• ISBN-13: 978-0805066081
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,852,021 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read, April 9, 2001

By 

EJ (Marlborough, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Singing Boy: A Novel (Hardcover)

Though I am an avid reader for the entertainment I rarely find a book that I absolutely cannot put down. As I read while flying I had to glance around to see how many people saw the tears well in my eyes again and again. This book is written with an amazing amount of compassion for it's characters. It is a story that will make you stop and think about your life and how important things really are. Don't miss the opportunity to read one of the best books I have read in a long time. I would give it ten stars if I could.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A STORY RELATED WITH GRACE AND BEAUTY, March 17, 2001

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Singing Boy: A Novel (Hardcover)

As his debut novel, The Music Room (1990), garnered both critical and popular acclaim, Dennis McFarland soon found himself named among America's premier wordsmiths. His next two novels, most notably School For The Blind (1994), ensured his standing.

Readers anticipate this author's supple, compelling prose. Such expectations are fulfilled with Singing Boy, a poignant exposition of grief in which Mr. McFarland again touches upon his recurring themes of death, forgiveness, and the mercy of time.

Following a dinner at which he has been honored, Malcolm Vaughn, with his wife, Sarah, and Harry, their eight-year-old son, is driving home through a quiet Massachusetts night. Malcolm's attention is caught by an old Corvair blocking their passage through an intersection. When he goes to investigate, he is shot and killed by the Corvair's driver, a stranger. Harry watches as his father is slain, and Sarah cradles her husband as he bleeds to death on the street.

Upon arriving at the hospital, Sarah calls Deckard Jones, a black Vietnam war veteran, who is Malcolm's best friend. Deck, as he is called, is approaching fifty. He has spent time in a detox unit, is haunted by the horrors of wartime carnage, and has recently lost his girlfriend. His life, it seems, is going fast but headed nowhere.

"Spontaneous murder," according to the police, is the classification for Malcolm's death. However, this is not the story of a crime but a powerful tale of how three bereaved souls respond to tragedy. Each retreats in a different way, unable to contemplate let alone cope with their shock and grief.

Sarah, a chemical engineer, is immobilized, incapable of decision making, unable to offer Harry parental affirmation, even a modicum of guidance.

Of Sarah Mr. McFarland writes, "No one will understand that her grief is what she has left of him, and if she were to lose that, she would have nothing at all."

Young Harry conceals his trauma behind a mask of normalcy - he doesn't cry, he speaks politely when spoken to, reiterating that he is fine.

In analyzing Harry's behavior, Deckard concludes, "There was something too smooth about it, too business-as-usual, too no-problem."

Confronted with a grieving Sarah whom he is trying to nudge in a "back-to-normal direction" and a child who seems so extremely normal that it's worrisome, Deckard assumes the role of protector, repressing his mourning for a friend's death until personal crises threaten to pull him under.

Related with truthfulness and compassion the struggles of three people become a reflection of our own periods of loss. Many can relate to the words Harry utters as an adult: he remembers the summer of his father's death as a time when "he'd learned the word `inconsolable,' and what a deep deep well of a word it was."

Mr. McFarland has said that in this story he wanted to honor Sarah's "right to be inconsolable, her right for claiming as much time for grieving as she needed......I wanted to show that it's impossible to shape and pace grief through an effort of will."

He has accomplished this with with grace and beauty. For this we are grateful.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Book Leaves This Reader Torn, September 26, 2001

By 

B. Carrigan (south) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Singing Boy: A Novel (Hardcover)

I'm reading this book and thinking already of the review I am going to write. That's not a good sign I wouldn't think. Here's the problem I read the inside jacket and the whole concept of the story drew me amd I wanted to get to know these characters and even care about them. Now I am almost finished(less than 20 pages) and I still have a lot of questions about Sarah, Deckard and Harry. The author gives you perspective from Deckard and Sarah, but I wonder what it would have been like to get inside little Harry's mind and hear from him. I really don't want to give the idea that this is a bad book but it left me wanting to know the real story and to dig a little deeper.
Finally, I must say I'm still mad that I read a reviewer on Amazon that decided to reveal the ending for all who read his or her review. Thumbs down to you!