Singing Boy: A Novel
Singing Boy: A Novel
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Overview
Bestselling author Dennis McFarland's masterful novel about three people's struggles to reclaim their lives in the wake of unfathomable tragedy.
In a moment of senseless violence, Malcolm Vaughn's life is ripped away from him, leaving his wife and child to make sense of the shattered existence that remains. Sarah, a lab scientist and Malcolm's widow, retreats into herself, refusing to return to work when even the most mundane activities require enormous effort.
Malcolm's son, Harry, just eight-years-old, goes cold, detaching from the grief that is rippling around him. Meanwhile, Vietnam vet Deckard Jones, Malcolm's best friend, is forced to come to terms with yet another loss. Sarah, Harry, and Deckard must each find a way to go on while everything around them appears to be crumbling.
Stunning and elegant, Singing Boy is a richly drawn audiobook of mourning, remembrance, and recovery, and a nuanced look at three individuals' slow march toward healing.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781531819132 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Brilliance Audio |
| Publication date: | 08/02/2016 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.25(w) x 6.75(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
She'd been wrong to leave him so motherless in her grieving; she'd been right to make a change and bring him here; she'd been wrong to think she could cure him all by herself. She'd carried him only so far and now, apparently, they'd reached a plateau. It was as if there was medicine Harry still needed to take, so that he could get well, and she was still trying to figure out the proper dosage or the proper administration of it, what he would tolerate. Too much of the unspoken, too much of the unspeakable still lay beneath the surface of their daily life.
Reading Group Guide
At the outset of this moving, luminous novel, Malcolm Vaughn, a successful architect in suburban Boston, is shot and killed in a random act of violence, an act witnessed by his wife Sarah and young son Harry. Sarah's grief in the prolonged aftermath of this horrid act is total and totally devastating. She is unsure of how to return to work, how to talk to policemen and teachers, how to live in a world that does not include her husband. Her grief is the primary dramatic action of this book; the reader learns human and emotional truths from the example of her catharsis. Harry, her bright, artistic eight-year-old son, is by contrast more grounded and functional in his sadness, although Sarah begins to wonder (as does the reader) if and when the boy might lose his grasp. And then there is Deckard-the best friend Malcolm left behind, a Vietnam vet, and a comforting presence to not only Sarah and Harry but several other characters. The reader is also comforted by Deck, who is friendly, generous, and rich in the wisdom of experience. But when Deck finds himself wrestling with both the strengths and shortcomings of his own memories, grief turns to panic as the narrative races to an engrossing resolution. Singing Boy is a vivid, perceptive, character-driven family tragedy, a story about the depths of sorrow, the mysteries of fate, and the personal as well as communal paths people must travel as they face these depths and mysteries.
Discussion Questions: 1. Singing Boy begins with a senseless, deplorable act of violence that sets the story in motion. A crime has been committed, but author Dennis McFarland's narrative is only remotely concerned with solving it. Why? Apart from the initial crime, identify the key questions or mysteries confronted by the book's main characters. How, if at all, are they answered or resolved?
2. Although the narration of the novel is in the third person, nearly all the events that transpire are rendered from one of three different perspectives. Whose perspectives are these? Also, how do these shifting perspectives-and the book's frequent switching of verb tense-reflect the mental, emotional, and psychological states of the characters themselves?
3. Why does Sarah refuse to visit a therapist? Her mother thinks it might be a good idea, but Sarah cannot be persuaded. Is Sarah being stubborn here, or does she have other reasons (and if so, what are they)?
4. Consider the character of Harry, the "singing boy" of this tale. Given the trauma he is experiencing, how do his thoughts, speech, and behavior reflect his young age?
5. If Sarah's foremost personal burden is grief (the long, dark maze of sorrow that comprises the main plot of the novel), and Deckard's is memory (either the unwanted kind or the vanishing kind), then what might be Harry's? Identify important imagery and dialogue from the text in support of your response.
6. Discuss the relationship between Sarah and Detective Sanders. How does it change over the course of the book? How does Sarah's overall view of the police change? And how, if at all, did reading this book alter your own view of police work -- the nature of it, the routine of it, the reality of it, and so forth?
7. Although Sarah has acted selfishly and stubbornly -- as she herself realizes and admits -- during so much of her grieving, she becomes convinced, about two-thirds of the way through the narrative, that she and Harry must retreat to her family's summer home. Neither Deckard nor Harry's principal consider this a wise move, but Sarah does it anyway. Why is she so adamant about making this trip? Be as specific as you can. And was it the right thing to do? Explain.
8. Toward the end of the novel, Deckard tells Harry about the "single question that saved [Deckard's] life." What exactly is this question? Who asked it, and why did it prove so potent, so fateful? And why is it significant that Deckard is now telling Harry of this secret question?
9. In one interview, discussing the manner in which he wrote this book, McFarland remarked: "I had to balance the grieving with some amount of wit. It's true to life that even in the depths of despair something will happen that will make us laugh." Cite places in the text where this is true.
10. Finally, how would you evaluate this novel as a portrayal of grief? If possible, refer to your own experiences of mourning, or those of someone close to you, to address the delicate subject matter of Singing Boy -- and how this subject is handled by the author. Did the novel thus strike you as accurate and/or convincing? Explain why or why not.
About the Author:
Dennis McFarland is the bestselling author of The Music Room, School for the Blind, and A Face at the Window. His fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories and The New Yorker. He lives with his family in Massachusetts.
Interviews
A Message from the Author
Dear Reader,
There is for me an important connection between Singing Boy and my first novel, The Music Room. In the earlier book, I told the story of a man whose brother jumped out a hotel room window and killed himself; through the shock of it, the surviving brother comes to terms with his own troubled past and eventually makes a new, better beginning. A short time after it was published, I received a letter from a woman whose son had actually jumped out a window and killed himself. She was angry at my playing into the notion that tragic loss somehow improves us; she said she was tired of friends and colleagues constantly looking at her for signs of progress. The letter shook me, and I never forgot it.
A few years later, a boy in my daughter's class at school was swept away by a riptide and drowned. It was an unthinkable tragedy, and when I talked with the mother, she said that one of the hardest parts of her grieving was the pressure of friends and family who wanted her to move past the loss, to get better, to get on with life. Meanwhile, what she wanted was for people to listen to her, to allow her as many tears as she needed to cry, and give her as much time as she needed.
I had these two women in mind as I developed the main character, Sarah, in Singing Boy. In the first chapter of the book, Sarah's husband is killed -- the victim of what is apparently random violence -- and in the aftermath, I wanted to honor Sarah's right to be inconsolable; I wanted to try to show that she was in fact "getting on" with life, but that her life would never be the same. I wanted to show that it's impossible to shape and pace grief through an effort of will. And I wanted to show how the beauty of the natural world can sometimes help people in their sorrow and sometimes help them to help each other.
My own son, who's just a bit older than the little boy in the novel, gave me the title for the new book. We'd recently moved into an apartment in a grand old building from the early 1900s. One night when he and I were home alone, he ran singing down the hallway, and as I caught up to him, I saw that he'd suddenly stopped in his tracks, just past the master bedroom. "Is there somebody in there?" he asked. I told him no, but he made me inspect the room to be sure. When I asked him why he'd thought somebody was there, he said he'd seen a man and that the man had called out to him. "What did he say?" I asked, and his answer, which he demonstrated in a convincing, hailing fashion, was, "Singing Boy."
I hope you like the new novel, and I know I speak for writers everywhere when I say thank you for reading and buying books.
Sincerely,
Dennis McFarland