Strengths & Weaknesses of Lark & Termite

Ultimately, you have to accept "Lark & Termite" for what it is and for what it is not (true of any book?). The writing throughout remains very strong, unusual, definitely the strength of the novel, particularly the chapters about the disabled young man, Termite. There have not been a whole lot of attempts in fiction to get right into the mind of a disabled young person - Faulkner did it well, the more recent Curious Case of the Dog... was OK. Jayne Anne Phillips has a very fine sympathy for her title character and is able to get quite effectively at the way he might see the world. It's particularly interesting to see her sense of how he uses language: to other character, it appears that he awkwardly repeats random phrases, but Termite thinks he is trying to help the others complete their thoughts. I'm a little disturbed to see a supernaturalist strand enter the narrative, as Termite for some reason seems able to picture the death (in Korea) of the father he never met. This seems unnecessary in a novel whose stength is its portrayal of ordinary people in their daily tribulations. Lark, the older sister who cares for Termite, is a very sympathetic character as well, and though her chapters are also beautifully crafted they in no way seem like the voice of a teenage girl, unless she's a prodigy (which Lark is not). As noted in earlier posts, this is not a novel built on plot, very little happens in the foreground, though we do get a lot of the back story of the older characters - early sibling rivalries, running away from home, multiple marriages, the Korean War. A fair amount of incident, I guess, but I'm waiting for some kind of tension, crisis, issue among the main characters and, except for the vague threat that the state might want to place Termite in a home, nothing much going on that I can see. Anyone who reads this blog knows that I have a pretty broad range of literary taste, but I don't care for overly crafted, delicate novels of sensibility, and this, for all its strengths, is slipping into that status.