To Be Sung Underwater
Page 44
—Gale Walden, O, The Oprah Magazine
“Let’s face it: We’re a country that loves second chances. We want to rewrite our lives and beat against the current to recapture our pasts. That’s certainly the case in Tom McNeal’s hypnotic new novel, To Be Sung Underwater. His complex, often heartbreaking heroine tries to find the first love she left behind many years ago…. McNeal captures the flush of first love and the endurance of real devotion, even as he probes deeper questions: Who are we with the ones we love, and who are we without them?… Heartbreaking, messy, and incredibly sad, To Be Sung Underwater is so vividly written that it takes you to a place where all your perceptions seem dizzyingly altered. Which is, of course, exactly like love itself.”
—Caroline Leavitt, Washington Post
“Smart, sexy, gorgeous, and at times devastatingly sad—these words describe the woman at the heart of this wonderful novel almost as well as they do the book itself. This ravishing love story will envelop you for a few days and then linger for a long time thereafter.”
—Ann Packer, author of Swim Back to Me and The Dive from Clausen’s Pier
“Beautifully written…. A compelling story, uniting the literary, character-driven novel with what eventually becomes quite a page-turner…. These two men, Judith’s father and Willy, are wonderfully drawn, complicated characters, both calm, thoughtful, loving, and intelligent, with their own unique life philosophies. And smooth-talking Willy has a wry humor that is downright sexy. Readers, along with Judith, will fall in love with him…. The story keeps you up at night. This novel will make for great book-club discussions…. Tom McNeal is a brilliant writer, and what I do believe (and look forward to) is that there will be more great novels to come from Mr. McNeal, ones to be sung above and under the water.”
—Sarah Willis, Cleveland Plain Dealer
“In this thoughtful and compelling look at the road not taken, McNeal calls up the landscape of the Great Plains as a place where it’s possible to see that it’s the simple things—a secluded swimming hole, a cold beer, the laughter of the person you love—that are most valuable.”
—Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist (starred review)
“Mr. McNeal’s characters are full and knowable. His sentences are the strong, silent type: generous without being showy. And his novel is, quite simply, lovely.”
—Susannah Meadows, New York Times
“If a book is built, not just written, then Tom McNeal deserves some kind of award for literary architecture for his wise and heartbreaking novel, To Be Sung Underwater. Tom McNeal’s tale is built around the past, the present, and what could have been. That’s appropriate, because one of its main characters is a young Nebraska carpenter who has a lovely way with words and tools…. At first, McNeal shifts between then and now. Just when I began to race a bit through the Los Angeles parts to get to the Nebraska parts, he seamlessly merged two stories into one…. I regretted parting from To Be Sung Underwater, a novel to fall in love with. It picked me up in New York and set me down in Nebraska. That’s not Rio, but in McNeal’s hands, it could be.”
—Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today
“McNeal is adept at describing the pace of life in the rural Midwest, which he likens to ‘standing within an unshaken snow globe.’ ”
—The New Yorker
“Whatever happened to our first loves? What would life have been like if we had stayed together? This wonderfully written, intelligent love story explores those poignant questions.”
—Judy Romanowich Smith, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“You don’t so much read To Be Sung Underwater as you’re consumed by it. The characters are unforgettable. The writing is staggering. More importantly, though, it’s the courage of this book that sets it apart. It’s the bravest, most beautiful book I’ve read in a long time.”
—Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief
“Tom McNeal’s absorbing novel To Be Sung Underwater is a quiet and immersive story about ‘who gets handed your heart and what they do with it.’… McNeal’s ability to tell the story from a female point of view is shockingly accurate, as is his Richard Russo–esque ability to make small-town characters simply complicated, juxtaposing the human experience with remarkable depth…. Gradually developing comprehensive characters that resonate with the contemporary themes of choice and yearning, McNeal’s work feels like an anthology of human experience as he artfully weaves the protagonist’s intricate backstory with her present life. To Be Sung Underwater is a beautiful novel that bravely examines the effect a broken relationship can have on one’s life path. Comparing the ‘heliotropic’ California lifestyle to the ‘flutish wind’ passing through the pine-scented woods of Nebraska, McNeal further helps us understand the profound dichotomy of Judith’s difficult choices. As you reach the inevitable and surprising ending of Judith’s journey, you’ll find yourself gliding toward the last word, yearning to float along the pages a little longer, and marveling at the profound depth of To Be Sung Underwater.”
—Carrie Keyes, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“To Be Sung Underwater finds its stride: Even if its characters are archetypes (the cornpone-wise farm boy, the brittle Ivy League urbanite), they’re ones we come to care about.”
—Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly
“A love affair to remember…. Exquisitely heartbreaking.”
—Family Circle
“Utterly engrossing…. Richly rendered…. A delicious love story…. Like a grander, straighter, funnier Brokeback Mountain, this is an immensely involving love story that will make your heart race, leap, and sing. Essential summer reading, in fact.”
—Melissa Katsoulis, The Telegraph (UK)
“When you are about twenty pages into this book, you will begin to lament the fact that it will, inevitably, come to an end. Tom McNeal knows how girls and women, men and boys, think and act and talk—and why. He makes the reader want to stay in this book forever, as if it were real life…. The bittersweet reunion of Willy and Judith is replete with surprises leading to story’s end. There are no pink ribbons to make a pretty package, but there is a beautifully told, true-to-the-bone story of people more real than your neighbors. This is a novel to be enjoyed and shared with every good reader you know.”
—Valerie Ryan, Seattle Times
“Award winner McNeal (Goodnight, Nebraska) deftly blends flashbacks of Judith’s teen years living with her father in humdrum Rufus Sage with her crisis-filled life in fast-paced L.A.”
—Donna Bettencourt, Library Journal
“To Be Sung Underwater beautifully sings the story of one woman’s wrestling with the present realities of a life she created after shedding her hometown skin and abandoning the lover who knew her best. Author Tom McNeal (Goodnight, Nebraska) intricately develops the emotional ties between his characters, capturing the essence of the human heart while rejoicing in the restorative power of reconnection. The novel shows that we may not be able to bring our past with us into the present, but by looking back, we might see just where we are truly meant to be.”
—Tara Pettit, BookPage
Contents
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part Two
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part Three
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Reading Group Guide
A conversation with Tom McNeal
Questions and Topics for Discussion
Also by Tom McNeal
Praise for Tom McNeal’s To be Sung Underwater
Copyright
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2011 by Tom McNeal
Reading group guide copyright © 2012 by Tom McNeal and Little, Brown and Company
Cover design by Lindsey Andrews
Cover copyright © 2012 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First e-book edition: June 2011
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“Too Marvelous for Words”: Words by Johnny Mercer, music by Richard A. Whiting, © 1937 (Renewed) WB Music Corp. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Music Publishing Co., Inc.
ISBN 978-0-316-17544-9