Book Notes: Termite Parade

 

Our September book club took place at Melisa's new house last night.  We were all very excited to see it. Her house is gorgeous, the food and drinks were delicious. Lulu was feeling wild and got banished to the back of the house because she couldn't stay away from the drinks.

 

 

 

As usual, Bess put together a write-up summarizing our discussion of the novel:

**Spoiler Alert! 

Bookworms Melisa and Kayla had read Joshua Mohr's novel Some Things That Meant the World To Me and really enjoyed it, which was why Melisa was drawn to Termite Parade. I think they both liked Some Things a little more than Termite Parade, which is saying a lot because we all wanted to give Termite Parade between three and four stars. We all loved how well drawn the characters of Derek, Mired, and Frank were. They felt really distinct from each other and three dimensional, and they were also very interesting. I thought their dialogue was smart and fun to read. We also liked grappling with the questions that the book did: Do people ever really change? If our lives are guided only by chance and randomness, why does anything we do, good or bad, matter? When a relationship gets really bad, can the couple ever grow together, or do they just need to be apart —or, if their identities are so tied to each other, will they be worse off on their own? Another thing we liked was the author's reluctance to answer these questions. Although we had mixed feeling about the "old dog, new tricks" ending, we appreciated the ambiguity. Courtney thought Mired was still considering ending things with Derek at that point and was moving closer to making that decision when the book ended, a reading that most of us liked because we felt that their relationship had gone too sour to be mended and that Mired could only change for the better by leaving him. But honestly, I secretly wanted to believe they could stay —and grow —together, but I know that's an overly romantic and naive sentiment. We were a little confused by the hammer incident and what the violence of that act meant, as we were with both Derek's and Frank's actions in the filming of the Animal Unveiled movie. It made sense that Frank would hide behind his lens while he tried to capture people at their worse (because that was how he acted with his friends and families too), but why did Derek get involved? Was it because Derek wasn't trying to suppress his violent tendencies, while Frank still was? We also weren't sure why Frank got so much more unlikeable as the book ended, while Mired and Derek became more likeable. 

      

*Want to watch our video discussion on the novel? Check it out here.