by Dennis McFarland
Disquiet slithers through McFarland's work. In each of his four novels the protagonists press mightily to come to terms with unexpected loss. In the searing Singing Boy, Boston architect Malcolm Vaughn is driving home with his scientist wife, Sarah, and their 8-year-old son Harry when he stops to help another motorist he thinks is ill—and is shot and killed for his efforts. The novel, told from the alternating perspectives of Sarah, Harry and Malcolm's best friend Deckard Jones, an African-American Vietnam vet, chronicles how each of the trio suffers—Deckard's memory problems and 'Nam flashbacks, Harry's unnatural silences and helpless bed-wetting, Sarah's feral grief—and how they separately fight their way back to the land of the living. McFarland is particularly-adept at the small moments of which heartbreak is made: a shattered teapot; Sarah's attempt to find solace in Malcolm's closet; and her Brazilian housekeeper's hard-edged efforts to nudge her into healing. "You have no light," the maid observes. But Singing Boy does. (Holt, $25)
Bottom Line: Beautiful mourning
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