Lark & Termite: A Novel

Jayne Anne Phillips takes her time with every sentence, every story; her novels are born as much of idea as of cadence. Or at least that is my suspicion, as I have now read every book she has published, studied her way with words, marveled at the structural risks she's not afraid to take.

Lark & Termite, which is due out this January, is a labor of most transparent love. It's a book that required Jayne Anne to craft an understanding of the Korean War and, in particular, of the terrible massacre at No Gun Ri. It forced her to settle deep into the West Virginia of the 1950s; to penetrate the vision of a severely disabled young boy and of his caretaking sister; to imagine mothering of one sort and then of another; and to navigate the border between romance and love, trust and betrayal, stories told and stories believed.

Like Faulkner, Jayne Anne has a gift for multiple voices and the slide of time. She is capable of blur and clarity, of words that fall like rain between the and, the and, the and. Her eroticism is unblinkered., and when Jayne Anne sits down to describe some one thing, she takes the whole world in and funnels it back through a stream of blue poetry.

We wait for the work of masters to teach us something new, to surprise us. With Lark & Termite, Jayne Anne's first book in nine years, she proves again her mastery. Listen, for example, to this, Lark's voice:

"Life feels big to me but I'm not sure it's long. I rub cereal off the hard curved lips of the breakfast bowls, and life feels broad and flat, like a sand beach rolling into desert, miles and miles. Like pictures of Australia I've seen, with a sapphire sky pressing down and water at one edge. That edge is where things change all at once. You might see the edge coming, but you cant tell how close or far away it is, how fast it might come up. I can feel it coming. Like a sound, like a wind, like a far-off train."