School for the Blind

A Novel

By: Dennis McFarland

Narrated by: Jonathan Yen

His life's work and ambition fulfilled, Francis Brimm believes the only metamorphosis left him is a slow, affable decline toward death. So he returns to the town of his youth and to his sister, Muriel, whose life has been as uneventful as Francis's has been exciting.But life is not about to let Francis go. Faces from the past haunt him, surprises in the present unsettle him. And suddenly, two people who thought their lives were over find themselves struggling not to be overwhelmed by new knowledge, hidden truths, and unexpected danger...

©1994 Dennis McFarland (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Disjointed and poorly narrated

I am a fan of Denis McFarland, but this book, "School For the Blind" really lacks any kind of structure or meaning. McFarland's "Nostalgia" is (for me) the best work of fiction about the American Civil War, bar none, but "School for the Blind" is painfully mundane and feels as if it was stitched together from spare parts. The dialogue, which is just so so, is completely ruined by the narrator, who reads at an excruciatingly slow pace (first time ever I have had to up the narration speed), and seems to sneer as he speaks. His "female voice" sounds exactly like Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie" and he massacres the name Dierdre, pronouncing it as "Deer Dray" every time, and every time it's a like a knife to the heart, totally unforgivable. Do your homework, dude, take some pride in your work. In the end I bailed with only an hour left - I just could not stand it any longer. McFarland deserved a better narrator, but McFarland also let himself down with this stinker of a book. Sorry, Denis, but this book needed an editor.