Well, this isn’t new per se, it came out in January, but I’ve only heard about it now. “Lark & Termite” is the latest novel by the above author. and
According to USA Today, the novel: “unfolds as a fractured fable of familial secrets, suffering and survival told from four perspectives. The most remarkable, and tricky, among them belongs to a mentally disabled but preternaturally perceptive boy, 9-year-old Termite, an analog to Faulkner's 33-year-old Benjy. Termite's sealed-off world hums like the cavity of a conch shell, as we learn from his lonely but loving half-sister, Lark.”
Publishers Weekly notes: “Phillips creates a wrenching portrait of devotion while keeping the suspense at a palpitating level.”
This book is based upon Faulkner’s “The Sound of the Fury,” and if you’ve ever read that, trust me—it’s a slog, albeit with some good moments here and there.
Yet the USA Today reviewer notes: “It takes nerve to open a book with a epigraph drawn from one of the Great American Novels, The Sound and the Fury — and then model the narrative after it.”
I highly doubt that if the Faulkner manuscript stumbled upon any publisher’s desk, that it would end up anywhere but the slush pile.
Read the USA Today review here .
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