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Seventeen-year-old Chris Newsome -- academically gifted, an athlete, on his way to an Ivy League college -- and his nerdy best friend Jim Firestone are obsessed with heavy-metal rock music. One afternoon, listening to the blaring dissonance of "Hope Against Hope, " their favorite CD from their favorite band, Shallow Grave, Jim shoots himself in the head and dies; Chris shoots himself and doesn't. The novel follows a double narrative in alternating chapters: one strand describes the events after these inexplicable acts of violence from the point of view of Chris's father, Tommy; the other, from Chris's viewpoint, traces the events leading up to Jim's death and his own bungled suicide attempt.As the two narratives converge, father and son are shocked into greater understanding of themselves, each other, and their own responsibility for what has happened. In the final chapter we catch a fleeting glimpse of how this family may ultimately be able to heal. By dispassionately confronting the unspeakable, Brutal,Music moves beyond the headlines to forge a compelling portrait of our violent culture, our baffling times.