You have to work your way toward this novel : Lark & Termite

Started reading the promising, challenging "Lark & Termite," by Jayne Anne Phillips last night. It appears that it will alternate POV by chapter, perhaps shifting among 4 main characters (if the list of chapter titles at the opening is a true harbinger). First chapter is from the POV of a guy named Leavitt, young soldier in the Korean War - I wonder what drew Phillips to write about Korea? I know she's about my age, and that war seems very remote from our experience - I'm pretty sure some of her successful early work was about Vietnam vets. Anyway, Leavitt, a tough Jewish guy from Philly who has done everything he can to pull up his roots, was playing in a jazz band in, I think, Louisville, falls for the jazz singer, marries her, leaves for Korea, she's home pregnant about to deliver. Leavitt thought he'd have an easy hitch in Korea, it was 1950 before the way, learning the language on a GI program, playing some jazz, but as the war starts he's drawn into combat, eventually to leadership as so many die in skirmishes. So the chapter is full of tension and anguish, he cannot get in touch with his wife, from the field, he doubts he'll get home alive. Stylistically, the debt to Faulkner is enormous - in particular Sound & the Fury - it's like stream of consciousness but from the third person, with a pastiche of time elements and memories, so that the narrative picture only gradually comes into focus and your way remains somewhat opaque through the whole chapter. This is a novel you have to work toward, you have to bring something to it, as Phillips doesn't hand you all the narrative elements and lay it out for you easy.