I thought that being felled by bronchitis a few days after Christmas was the worst timing in the world, but every time I opened my eyes from a nap, LARK AND TERMITE by Jayne Anne Phillips kept beckoning.

I'd twice started LARK AND TERMITE, and I couldn't get into it.  Adding to my frustration were that it appeared on eveyone's BEST OF 2009 lists, and also that my friend Russell Perreault recommended it.  Russell is never wrong!

I picked it up, concentrated, and gave it some sustained reading.  Then I was hooked!  Clearly, what this quirky brilliant novel needed was some sustained attention. 

At the center is Lark, a child on the verge of adulthood;  and her brother Termite, a child unable to walk and talk but filled with radiance.  Around them, their mother Lola is a haunting but absent presence; their aunt Nonie, a matronly, vibrant woman in her fifties, raises them; and Termite's father, Corporal Robert Leavitt, caught up in the chaotic early months of the Korean War. This is a unique book, not necessarily mainstream, but the characters are so indelible, so intimately drawn, that they threaten to move in and take up permanent residence in your mind.

Russell was right!