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To Be Sung Underwater

A Novel

Audiobook
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
Judith Whitman always believed in the kind of love that "picks you up in Akron and sets you down in Rio." Long ago, she once experienced that love. Willy Blunt was a carpenter with a dry wit and a steadfast sense of honor. Marrying him seemed like a natural thing to promise. But Willy Blunt was not a person you could pick up in Nebraska and transport to Stanford. When Judith left home, she didn't look back.
Twenty years later, Judith's marriage is hazy with secrets. In her hand is what may be the phone number for the man who believed she meant it when she said she loved him. If she called, what would he say?
To Be Sung Underwater is the epic love story of a woman trying to remember, and the man who could not even begin to forget.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 4, 2011
      Judith Whitman is 44, questioning her life, and thinking about the hometown boy she jilted almost 30 years before in McNeal's affecting second novel (after Goodnight, Nebraska). At Stanford, Judith had met the "older, urbane" Malcolm and they married, moved to Los Angeles, and built an enviable life. Now she's bored with her suave, unfaithful banker husband, guilty about her lack of maternal feelings for her teenage daughter, and overburdened and distracted at her job editing a "respected television drama." McNeal's agile prose manages to render Judith sympathetic, though she's not an easy character to like. Flashbacks evoke her youth in Vermont, and her decision, when her parents separate and her mother becomes neglectful, to move to Nebraska to live with her father. When Judith, as a high school senior, falls in love with Willy, a local intelligent and sensitive carpenter, she imagines a simple life in the town of Rufus Sage, but after she leaves for college the relationship unravels. Despite a slow start and dialogue heavy on aphorisms, McNeal succeeds with his obvious affection for the daily rhythms of life in Nebraska and his sensitive exploration of marital stresses and psychological accommodations, in addition to a moving surprise denouement.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Middle-aged Judith Whitman has a dream career as a film editor, a husband, and a teenage daughter. Nonetheless, she finds herself drawn back to her past as she remembers her first love, Willy Blunt, and decides to track him down. Narrating in a well-modulated alto, Susan Boyce gives Judith a calm, mature voice as she examines her life. Boyce also provides slight variations in tone and pitch for some of the dialogue. Most of the story is told from Judith's point of view, and the slow, even pace Boyce employs matches Judith's older self to perfection as well as her reflections on her younger self. The downside is that her pace doesn't serve to drive the story forward. As a result, the story of Judith and Willy is one that must be savored. E.N. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      May 1, 2011

      Judith Whitman is a 44-year-old successful film editor in Los Angeles, with patient husband Malcolm, teenage daughter Camille, and a big secret. Twenty-seven years after she left Rufus Sage, NE, to attend Stanford University, she can't stop thinking about her first love, Willy Blunt. Willy wanted to marry her, but she wanted to go to college first. Then she met Malcolm and just never returned. Judith's life veers off course because of her obsession, and under the assumed name Edie Winks, she hires a private detective to trace her Nebraska friend. She is shocked to find out that Willy ended up marrying her best friend, Deena. Nevertheless, he returns her call and leaves a distressing message that he needs to see her immediately. Covering her trip with lies and a fabricated story about her mother being in a hospital in Mexico, Judith takes off for Nebraska for one last reunion with Willy. Their meeting is very nostalgic but turns bittersweet when she learns the real reason for his desperate plea. VERDICT 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. [See Prepub Alert, 12/13/10.]--Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO

      Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Library Journal

      January 1, 2011

      McNeal made his name a dozen years ago with Goodnight, Nebraska, and here revisits small-town life by featuring a heroine who wanted to escape it. Judith Whitman believed in passionate love, and she surely loved steady carpenter Willy Blunt. But he was not about to leave Nebraska, and she was. Years later, unsettled in her marriage, she's starting to wonder if she made a mistake--and the chance of finding out looks to be just a phone call away. Sooo romantic, says the publicist, but the taut writing puts it above slush. A literate heartbreaker that reading groups will likely demand.

      Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from April 15, 2011
      Judith Whitman is deeply dissatisfied with her seemingly glamorous life in California. Her work as a film editor, which once held such joy, now gives her migraines; she suspects that her urbane husband is having an affair; and her beautiful daughter, once so loving, is now revealed as entitled and self-absorbed. Increasingly, her thoughts are drawn to the summers she lived in Nebraska with her father, specifically, the summer she fell in love with Willy Blunt. One phone call to him is all it takes for her to ditch her work and her life and head back to Nebraska. There she comes face to face with the full ramifications of her earlier decision to leave home for Stanford and lose touch with the boy with whom she had been so deeply in love. Their easy familiarity with each other, their special humor, and their physical connection instantly resurface. In this thoughtful and compelling look at the road not taken, McNeal (Goodnight, Nebraska, 1998) calls up the landscape of the Great Plains as a place where its possible to see that its the simple thingsa secluded swimming hole, a cold beer, the laughter of the person you lovethat are most valuable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

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