Singing Bird: A Novel

by Roisin McAuley

Overview

Twenty seven years after she adopted her baby daughter in Ireland, Lena Molloy receives a mysterious call from Sister Monica, the nun who set up the adoption. She claims that she wants to merely tie up loose ends before she retires, but Lena feels both anxious and frightened after the call. Against her husband's wishes, and accompanied by her best friend, Alma — who is nursing a broken heart — Lena travels to the west of Ireland on a secret mission to trace the birth parents of her daughter, Mary, an up-and-coming star in the world of opera.

At first the trail seems to have gone cold. Saint Joseph's home for unmarried mothers has become an old people's home, and Sister Monica is dismissive and unforthcoming. Then a chance meeting sets Lena on a journey through Ireland and into the past, taking her through many twists and turns to an outcome she could never have anticipated.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060737894
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/22/2005
Series:	P.S. Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.76(d)

About the Author

Roisin McAuley is the author of Singing Bird. She joined the BBC in Northern Ireland as a newsreader and announcer, and then became a reporter for the BBC. She has also produced and directed documentaries for British television and programs for BBC Radio. She lives in England.

Read an Excerpt

Singing Bird

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By McAuley, Roisin

William Morrow & Company

ISBN: 0060737883

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Chapter One

We were drinking champagne in the kitchen when the nun telephoned. I rerun the moment. What if I hadn't decided to have a party? What if we'd simply locked up and gone elsewhere for a drink? Or if the house move had been a week earlier? Would my life have continued in the safe, familiar pattern?

Maybe. But she was a determined woman. She would have tracked down the new address and telephone number. We were only moving to the other side of the Thames. We are in the telephone book.

Or she would have left a message. And I would have replied. Because my latent curiosity only wanted an excuse. I would have taken the same path into the past eventually. She is not to blame.

I go back in my mind to the day of the call. It was our second last day in the old house. I got up early and made a lamb casserole. At eight o'clock I brought Jack a cup of coffee and drew back the curtains in the bedroom.

'The wind blew the runner beans down. They look all ragged and forlorn.'

'Summer always ends with a storm'; he said. 'We're halfway through September, Lena.'

He bent his blond head over the cup and inhaled, before drinking.

'You spoil me,' he said.

'I like spoiling you.'

'Do you mind me going away?'

A blackbird flew up from the wreckage of the beans and settled on the garden wall.

I turned and smiled at him. 'Everything's under control.'

I had plotted the move on aspreadsheet, and pinned it up in the hall. After Jack left for the office, Alma and two of my neighbours arrived to help me pack up. We moved methodically from room to room, sorting, packing, and tying colour-coded labels to furniture and boxes.

Just before five o'clock, I tied a pink label to a box of cookery books. I took a bottle of champagne from the fridge and called out, 'That's the last one. Time to celebrate!'

It was Alma's birthday. I had made her a cake. It sat on the breakfast bar dividing the living space from the kitchen. A Victoria sponge. Cream and home-made raspberry jam in the middle. Soft white icing on top. Pink miniature candles matched the labels dotted around the room.

'How about some music,' Alma said. 'Some opera? Our favourite singer, perhaps?'

Rosemary and Janet clapped. I bowed to acknowledge the tribute to my daughter as I slipped Mary Molloy Sings Mozart and Rossini into the CD player. It was her first recording, and is still my favourite.

Mary's voice filled the empty space and floated up to the attics.

'Tell me fair ladies, what ails my heart?'

'Yonder cupid, is this his dart?'

Her entire personality is contained in that sparkling combination of music and words. Delight and wonder, perfectly conveyed. We had rolled up the rugs, leaving parquet and bare boards. There was nothing to deaden the sound.

'Yonder Cupid, is this his dart?' Mary reprised.

'It's like being inside a giant speaker,' Alma said.

We sat at the long oak table drinking champagne, drunk on the music. The sky cleared. Sunshine splashed into the room. Mary began the Cavatina from The Barber of Seville. I bathed in the afterglow of a job well done.

'Una voce poco fa,
Qu'nel cor m'risuono,'

I looked at the bright sky and thought of Mary on her way from Stuttgart to Heathrow. In the innocent minutes before the telephone rang, I sat in the September sunlight in a house I loved, listening to my daughter singing, in the company of friends, utterly content.

'Sono obbediente, dolce, amorosa;'

Alma said, 'Is that the telephone?'

' ... mi fo guidar.'

'Mary?' said Janet.

'She should be in the air by now. Unless her plane is late.'

Alma held open the glass door into the hall, waving me through with a flourish of her right hand. I waltzed past her, made a mock curtsy, and lifted the phone off the hook, still slightly unbalanced.

'Mrs Molloy? Mrs Lena Molloy?'

It wasn't Mary. I steadied myself against the banisters and signalled to Alma to turn down the music ... Continues...

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Excerpted from Singing Bird by McAuley, Roisin Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

[A] poised debut... McAuley deftly captures Lena’s unwavering drive.” — Publishers Weekly

“[An] engaging debut novel.” — Booklist

“A beautiful story by a gifted author.” — Liverpool Daily Echo

From the Publisher

[An] engaging debut novel.

Booklist

A beautiful story by a gifted author.

Liverpool Daily Echo

[An] engaging debut novel.

Booklist

A woman's search for her adopted daughter's birth mother leads to dramatic discoveries in McAuley's poised debut. An adopted child herself, Lena Malloy wondered about her own birth mother, but never learned who she was. A surprise check-in phone call from Sister Monica, "the nun who gave me Mary," leads Lena to wonder about Mary's biological parents-and about why the nun has called from Ireland after almost 30 years of silence. Lena's husband, Jack, discourages her curiosity, but Lena believes that Mary, a rising opera singer, will someday want to know the provenance of her magnificent voice. "You have no idea what it feels like not to know your origins. It has nothing to do with ingratitude, or selfishness," Lena thinks. "This is about feeling complete." With her best friend, Alma, Lena sets out for Dublin to see Mary in concert and do a little sleuthing. She faces off with a sour Sister Monica, finds an ally in a woman from the Natural Parents' Internetwork office and travels great distances to meet potential biological mothers. As Lena, a Catholic, works her way toward the truth, she's also forced to compromise her morals, and the secret she uncovers nearly destroys her family. McAuley deftly captures Lena's unwavering drive while building suspense, though coincidences and surprises-including the one about Mary's biological father-may strain credibility. Agent, Charlie Viney. (Dec.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Debut about a woman who searches for her adopted daughter's birth parents, then makes an earnest attempt to grapple with issues of sin and forgiveness, largely within the context of Catholicism. Narrator Lena, a middle-aged, happily conventional English woman whose active practice of Catholicism is a given, has been married to handsome, successful businessman Jack for years. Their adopted daughter, Mary, 27, is now a rising international opera singer. Out of the blue, Lena receives a phone call from Sister Monica, the nun who arranged for them to adopt Mary as an infant in Ireland and who now says she is checking on her babies as she prepares to retire. The call piques Lena's curiosity. Adopted herself, she regrets she was unable to trace her own birth parents after her adopted mother's death. With Jack away on a business trip and Mary about to perform in Dublin, Lena decides to take a week's vacation in Ireland with her agnostic, mildly bohemian friend Alma before attending Mary's concert. She doesn't tell Jack or Mary that, as a kind of gift to Mary, she's thinking of looking more deeply into Mary's parentage. While Alma begins a romance with a kindly widower staying at their inn, Lena shifts her search into high gear, helped by the happy coincidence (one of too many) that the innkeeper's wife is a volunteer at the Natural Parents' Internetwork office. Gathering clues, Lena begins to suspect that Sister Monica's brother, the well-known Singing Priest, Father Frank, may be Mary's father, the reason for the nun's unusual interest. Lena's moral code, already challenged by her own secrecy, faces further tests when she realizes that Mary is having a highly publicized affair with a marriedactor and then learns that Jack, not Father Frank, is Mary's father. Can she forgive him?McAuley, a British broadcast journalist, raises potentially interesting questions, but her answers come too easily to her manufactured and bland characters. Agent: Charlie Viney/Mulcahy & Viney

Kirkus Reviews