Termite Parade - Softcover

Mohr, Joshua

Softcover

ISBN 10: 098201516X ISBN 13: 9780982015162

Publisher: Two Dollar Radio, 2010

Synopsis

"[A] wry and unnerving story of bad love gone rotten. [Mohr] has a generous understanding of his characters, whom he describes with an intelligence and sensitivity that pulls you in. This is no small achievement."
-The New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice)

Similar to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment: the most crucial action serves as a portal to and wellspring for the various psychologies of its characters. But Mohr's storytelling is so absorbing that Termite Parade does not read like an analytical rumination; if he is examining the very nature of these characters under a microscope, he at least lets the specimens speak for themselves.”
San Francisco Chronicle

"Termite Parade is a sucker punch to literary complacency, without a hint of authorial self-absorption. Mohr is a post-millennial Bukowski with a dash of Hubert Selby, Jr. thrown in for good measure, and with only two published novels under his belt, he is rapidly becoming one of my favorite American novelists."
-Powell's Review-A-Day

Termite Parade is the follow-up to Joshua Mohr's San Francisco Chronicle bestselling first novel - and one of O, The Oprah Magazine's '10 Terrific Reads of 2009' - Some Things That Meant the World to Me.

Termite Parade tells the story of Mired, the self-described "bastard daughter of a menage a trois between Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Sylvia Plath, and Eeyore." Mired catalogs her "museum of emotional failures," the latest entry to which is her boyfriend Derek, an auto mechanic (whose body may or may not be infested with termites), who loses his cool carrying her up the stairs to their apartment.

As Derek's termites wreak havoc on his nervous system, Mired pieces together the puzzle, each character revealing aspects of their savage natures, culminating in a climax of pure animal chaos.

About this title

About the Author:

JOSHUA MOHR is the author of the novels Some Things that Meant the World to Me, which was one of O Magazine's Top 10 reads of 2009, and the newly released Termite Parade, which was an Editor's Choice selection of The New York Times Book Review. He has an MFA from the University of San Francisco and has published numerous short stories and essays in publications such as 7×7, the Bay Guardian, Zyzzyva, The Rumpus, Other Voices, the Cimarron Review, Gulf Coast and Pleiades, among many others. He lives in San Francisco and teaches fiction writing. Please visit him at joshuamohr.net.

From Publishers Weekly:

Told by three narrators, this is the fabulously grim if perhaps too intentionally murky tale of Mired (pronounced like the verb); her boyfriend, Derek; and his twin brother, Frank, as they fumble through the aftermath of Mired's strangely fateful drunken tumble down a flight of stairs. There were days I felt like the bastard daughter of a ménage à trois between Fyodor Dostoyevski, Sylvia Plath, and Eeyore, Mired says, and this could be said about the rest of the misanthropic trio as they spend the totality of the book trying to uncover truths about themselves and one another. Each has a chance to share parts of the story, and occasionally the brothers chime in together with childhood memories, which allows the story to lift itself, somewhat, from the confusion and disorder shared by the narrators. The prose, meanwhile, is oddly lovely, considering the characters' dark, boozy, mostly joyless worlds. As Derek grows more depressed and Frank has a falling out with his brother's girlfriend, the group moves toward a frenzied climax that calls for a tumbler of whiskey. (July)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 098201516X
• ISBN 13: 9780982015162
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208