Snag Lark Termite Drafted By Jayne Anne Phillips Listed As Softcover

had to abandoned this book, After aboutpages, I just couldn't keep going, The poetic flow of the story was so abstract that I was left in a dreamy haze often wondering what exactly was going on.
I don't mind poetry style prose as long as they are grounded in something concrete to give it a real place in time.
A scene here or there, sure I'll go along with, but page after page and character after character all thinking and talking in abstract thoughts and images just worked to totally alienate me and eventually I lost interest.
I want the story, not the purply prose of hard times and down on the light drudge, Maybe at a later time I will pick up the book and try again, but for now it's back on the shelf, A promising start. It didn't fully engage me, but it preengaged me, Enough to trudge on with Corporal Robert Leavitt through Korean villages, as memories of his pregnant wife, Lola, flooded him, There were even flavors of Tim O'Brien and Mailera hint, a possibility, a soft lure,

As Leavitt advanced with the story, it began to get soggy, And I am not referring to the terrain in Korea, Rather than some critics' accolades describing the novel as "elegant and mystical," I experienced it as rather inelegant, clumsy, and sophomoric, I saw what the author was ineffectively striving fora nonlinear, somewhat experimental approach of contrasts and abstractions laced with a mythical atmosphere, But it was weak yet wordy, prosaic, with a blurry tone and thorough lack of either irony or dramatic amplitude, It came off as authorial selfregard, It was stale, not ripe, and static, not dynamic, but rife with stilted prose and mixed metaphors tossed in at the oddest times.


Additionally, the voice of Termite, a child afflicted with hydrocephaly and features of autism, was overprecious, mawkish, and heavyhanded, What struck me was the novice writing of his interior dialogue/feelings/thoughts, It was distracting and clunky and utterly lacked the soul that the author strained ineffectively to express, Sometimes implication and sublimity is more effective to describe remote characteristics, but the author used exposition and dull images that did not congeal.
I could not get away from the contrivance of the author's writing, Phillips was taking stabs at erudition that were not edifying or convincing rather, it reached me with a resounding thud, It was as if she were saying, "Look how discordantly confounding I can be!" The tone was not evocative instead, it was gummy and synthetic.


A minor irritationchildren with Termite's afflictions tend to be "tactile defensive"i, e. they would not have tolerated the pattering of rain against their skin as Phillips had him seek, She either did not research Termite's handicaps or chose to ignore it,

"Lola's the cat", the author writes, Another prosaic metaphor. Or was it a clawing attempt at enigmatic hyperbole Well, Lola may be the cat, But this story is a dog, With fleas.

Finally gave up on this book, Just wasnt working for me, Amerikkalaisen Jayne Anne Phillipsin Kiuru ja Termiitti nousi lukulistalleni blogiystävän suosittelemana, Luin kirjailijan Suojelus teoksen viime vuonna ja Leena Lumi suositteli silloin minulle tätä toista kirjailijan teosta, Nämä kaksi teosta ovat aihepiiriltään erilaisia, mutta molemmissa on kirjailijalle tyypillinen maagisen runollinen ääni, johon liittyy psykologinen jännitys, odotus, intohimon herääminen ja ihastuminen.
Molemmissa kirjoissa yksi päähenkilöistä on pieni poika, Termiitti on puhumaton ja liikkumaton poika, Toinen päähenkilöistä on hänen melkeinv, isosiskonsa Kiuru, joka hoitaa ja rakastaa Termiittiä valtavan paljon, Kirjan kertojina toimivat myös Termiitin nuori isä ja molempien lasten täti Nonni,
On vuosijavuotias korpraali Robert Leavitt on keskellä Korean sotaa, Hän ei pelkää omasta puolestaan, vaan on jännittynyt vaimonsa Lolan synnytyksen johdosta, sillä synnytykseen on lyhyt aika, Tilanne EteläKoreassa on järisyttävän dramaattinen,
VuonnaLänsiVirginiassa Kiuru hoitaa Termiittiä, ja on samalla jokaisen lähiseudun miehen intohimon kohteena, Pienellä paikkakunnalla jokainen tuntee toisensa, joten kiihkeä ja kaunis Lola, lasten muualle muuttanut äiti, on vielä kaikkien muistissa ja tiedossa,
Jayne Anne Phillipsin Kiuru ja Termiitti koskettaa aihepiiriltään, se koskettaa henkilöidensä puolesta, se koskettaa tarinallaan ja luo maagisen ja lukumuistoihin jäävän kirjan, joka sisältää omanlaatuisen maailman, joka voisi olla niin totta.

This is one of those books where the starred ratings don't really work for me, There are many things to appreciate in this book, The writing is phenomenal. The structure is fascinating. There are many things about it that would be great to discuss in a book club,

But I didn't love reading it, As technically lovely as it was, it never really captivated me, The story centers around Lark, a teenage girl ins West Virginia, and her younger half brother, Termite, Termite doesn't speak or walk, and Lark is in charge of his care, Their story is told through the overlapping voices of multiple characters,

I admit to being a reader who loves a good plot, and this book is more of a portrait of the idea of devotion.
Parts of the book are way too slow for me, But then, when the action does kick in at the end, I don't really believe it,

I'm torn about this one, I have this feeling that "beautifully written" really means that I can't understand it without the aid of a readbetweenthelinesist,

The general story line is clear enough, but the feelings or thoughts of the characters were often expressed in some form of prose like a Joni Mitchell song.
I have a sense of your mood here, but what What did you just say

There's the mood about how everyone loves Termite so much, but why, really Tell me so I get it.
I don't walk away from this loving him,

There's a sense of Nonie's resolve and her commitment and dedication, but why doesn't she just make a go of things with Charlie

There's so much that I just didn't quite grok.
Perhaps a few weeks with an English teacher would improve my opinion, but as it stands, my opinion is that the characters never got real enough for me and that the story itself was sluggish.


The sense of what happens during the flood, while Lark and Termite escape to the attic pervasive throughout, . . something that should have been dynamic and dangerous and engaging was actually slow unsuspenseful, I read this for a book club that never ended up meeting, So I SHOULD be frustrated that I read it for nothing, But. I am not. Because if I had not been reading it for a book club, I likely would have thrown it against a wallpages in and said "i give up! shifting perspectives, a mentally challenged youth, and endless scenes in a korean tunnel.
who cares!"

but instead, i powered forward, thinking if i didn't finish it, book club would mock me, and i am glad i did, because the last third of the book was actually pretty good, so. either read this for a book club, or just read the last third, there were still too many scenes in a korean tunnel, though, Not my favorite book by a long shot! I finished this a few days ago and I just cannot wrap my head around it still.
I feel so unsettled by it, so uncomfortable which strikes me as a little surprising, because it's written almost innocently, set in small town West Virginia.
Yet these images keep bubbling up: Lola's boxes in the basement, Solly and Lark and Termite snuggled up like puppies, the blue ribbon Termite loves, the rats skimming the top of the flood.


Read this if you're looking for a dreamy, emotive story to read in hammock on a summer afternoon, National Bestseller
New York Times Notable Book
Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year

Lark and Termite is a rich, wonderfully alive novel about seventeen year old Lark and her brother, Termite, living in West Virginia in thes.
Their mother, Lola, is absent, while their aunt, Nonie, raises them as her own, and Termites father, Corporal Robert Leavitt, is caught up in the early days of the Korean War.
Awardwinning author Jayne Anne Phillips intertwines family secrets, dreams, and ghosts in a story about the love that unites us all, I love characters like Lark, Young females who are smart and thoughtful and deeply interesting on the inside and come across as either timid or strange on the outside.
Lark reminds me of Francie A Tree Grows in Brooklyn or several McCullers characters Frankie in The Member of the Wedding, Mick in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
Characters like these remind me of myself in some ways not their experiences, but the ways they think and what's important to them.


Stylistically, this book is stunning, The multiple perspectives is extremely welldone, Way better than, say, Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, I love too the way the plot inches along over the span of just a few days, Phillips takes us inside the characters rather than worrying about plot reminds me of Marilynne Robinson,

The language is also really welldone most of the time, It's extremely vivid and poetic, though there were a few moments in the beginning that seemed a little overwritten,

My only complaint about this book is Stamble, I love magical realism, but Stamble wasn't it, Termite's hearing ability and his seeing what Leavitt sees was magical realism and great, but Stamble wasn't because Lark and Termite are the only ones who see him.
I wished that he was either real or was not real but everyone saw him, The way that he sort of became a ghost turned me off and didn't seem to fit into the novel at all,

I wish that,was an option, but since it's not, I'll round up, :

Themes: family, love, magical realism, connections between people, sacrifice, family mystery, sound, water, light and dark Not My Cup of Tea But Recommended For Some

Let me start by saying that this is one of those times when I dislike assigning star ratings to reviews.
That being said, and this being a nonprofessional, completely consumer review, I had to give it two, This book, as the title of this review suggests, was not my cup of tea however, I would not encourage people to shy away from this book.
In fact, once it is published and released, I intend to recommend it to my mother,

I was unable to finish this book, I got about a third of the way through it before I stopped, When I ordered this book through the Amazon Vine Program, I was expecting to be enthralled by the characters and looking to see how they developed and engaged in the interesting situations/character traits they were presented/had.
In good consciousness, I can see how others would enjoy this story and these characters but, since I do not normally read this style of book, it was not for me.


I had difficulty caring about the characters, and was frustrated by the story that was developing and the characterizations created, The plot line is somewhat interesting, but not enough to grab me for an extended period of time,

Again, do not take this two star review as the gospel saying "do not read this book" rather, take it as I did not enjoy it, but you might.
As I said, I will recommend this book to my mother and some of my colleagues, who I'm sure would give it much higher reviews than I did.


I would normally give a book I cannot finish one star, but since I can clearly see the appeal for others and there are redeeming things about this book, I gave it two.


Good reading,

J, Stoner
sitelink blogspot. com The story is poetry, the characters swim and dive and twirl, Writing like this is writing for the sake of beautiful words,What's going on here Even though the reader can tell he's in the hands of a gifted novelist, especially if he has previous Jayne Anne Phillips experience, he might ask this question before allowimg himself to sink into her narrative, confident she'll get him to the end safely and satisfactorily.
And she does.

Lark and Termite is a novel told innarrative threads, There's a thread beginning July,in which a U, S. Army soldier fighting in Korea, his unit retreating before the overwhelming North Korean attack, encounters a group of refugees and tries to protect them.
Thed thread occurs over the same few July days nine years later, It relates the lives of the siblings Lark and Termite and several adults in Winfield, West Virginia, Once the reader becomes aware of thedistinct threads and the themes they share, he knows the author will bring everything together into a point to stab and stir the mind.
I could not have predicted the third thread with which she neatly wraps her package, The additional elements put one more puff of wonder into a novel already ballooning with wonder,

Phillips, in her earlier novels, writes of strong sister/brother

bonds, Here's another. Termite, though disabled, damaged, and deficient, shares traits of other brothers Phillips has written in that he seems to be a kind of nature boy possessing primal intelligence or awareness.
The sections told from his point of view show him to be a kind of wormhole allowing the different parts of the novel to flow into each other.
Lark, his caringyearold sister, is mostly woman, maybe goddess herself or maybe just votary, but easy to feel affection for, They're wonderfully realized characters.

In the Korean thread I detected a clumsiness in Phillips, She seems less comfortable with Robert Leavitt at the opening of the Korean War, It may be an unfamiliarity with place and writing about military action, To me she seems a little out of step, I did wonder if her wrongfootedness isn't so much failures of research or confidence as it is convenient arrangement to allow the fit of parallels and metaphor.


I usually scorch with scorn the supernatural in fiction, I'm not much interested in magic realism anymore, When I drive through West Virginia I don't see evidence of it, at least not on the route I take, But Phillips has found it there and shown it to us in ways to make the heart swell with wonder and gratitude, I call it magic realism to give the author the benefit of the labeling doubt, Realizing there was an air of mystery about the events that the characters didn't quite understand but accepted, I didn't mind it, And I didn't quite understand all of it, either, especially the angelic purpose of one character who comes bringing gifts and storms,

I've been away from Phillips for a number of years, Primarily because she hasn't published, I think, But I'm reminded what powerful fiction she can write, The novel was deservedly shortlisted for the National Book Award, While it didn't win, I think the story of Lark and Termite is written with the grace and authority most novelists can't bring to their fiction.
It's certainly the Jayne Anne Phillips I remember, .