There are books you recommend to everybody, and then there are books you share cautiously, even protectively. Jayne Anne Phillips's LARK AND TERMITE is that second kind, a mysterious, affecting novel you'll want to talk about only with others who have fallen under its spell. On the surface, nothing about the West Virginia family in LARK AND TERMITE seems especially noteworthy, except perhaps the consistency of their misfortune, but the author reveals their tangled secrets in such a profound and intimate way that these ordinary, wounded people become both tragic and magnificent.
This is not a good choice for devotees of fast-paced thrillers, but it does offer substantial rewards for readers who value passages of gorgeous, intelligent writing with intricate literary architecture. LARK AND TERMITE is a strange and joyous book which will yield much to the patient reader; as for me, the characters in this novel have taken up permanent residence in my mind.
