To Be Sung Underwater

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.

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.

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.)