MotherKind

'One of America's finest novelists... MotherKind is impressive and deeply moving... Compulsively readable' - Sunday Telegraph

Phillips's writing is distinctive, audacious and powerful

A brilliant writer, utterly original and with an astonishing range

Jayne Anne Phillips combines extraordinary perception with extraordinary versatility and power

No number of books read or films seen can deaden one to the intimate act of art by which this wonderful young writer has penetrated the definitive experience of her generation

Delicate compassion and hard-edged honesty... MotherKind is further proof of an extraordinary ability to reflect the texture of real life

Jayne Anne Phillips is the author of five works of fiction. The recipient of many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she is currently Professor of English and Director of the MFA Program at Rutgers-Newark, the State University of New Jersey. She divides her time between Boston, New York, and Glen Ridge, New Jersey.

Kate - whose care for her terminally ill mother coincides with the birth of her first child in the early months of a young marriage - must, in a single year, come to terms with radiant beginnings and profound loss. 
 
Kate's everyday world is enveloped by the gradual vanishing of her mother. And as the woman who has been her best friend and mentor disappears, we see Kate deal with timeless, perhaps unanswerable, questions of love and death.

Jayne Anne Phillips

'This novel is cut like a diamond, with such sharp authenticity and bursts of light

Lark and Termite is extraordinary and it is luminous. This is not simply classic Jayne Anne Phillips. This is something far more extraordinary. It is an astounding feat of the imagination. It is the best novel I've read this year

'What a beautiful, beautiful novel this is - so rich and intricate in its drama, so elegantly written, so tender, so convincing, so penetrating, so incredibly moving. I can declare without hesitation or qualification that Lark and Termite is by far the best new novel I've read in the last five years or so

'An extraordinary and brilliant piece of writing...a powerful and tender portrayal of a family'

Consistently inventive, evocative and uncompromising. Haunting is a word much overused, but Lark and Termite is exactly that: a novel whose elegant lingering images are hard to shake from the memory. This is a glowing, powerful and immensely readable paean to the power of family

Jayne Anne Phillips's intricate, deeply felt new novel reverberates with echoes of Faulkner, Woolf, Kerouac, McCullers and Michael Herr's war reporting, and yet it fuses all these wildly disparate influences into something incandescent and utterly original

An intense tale of love, loss and the bond of family that survive, almost miraculously, over time and space... What could have been a fairly conventional story... is transformed by Phillips into something extraordinary

'A moving meditation on the redemptive power of family and love'

Phillip's writing is distinctive, audacious and powerful

Remarkable. It is a strange and joyous book which will yield much to the patient reader

Lark and Termite, Phillips' fourth novel, has high expectations to live up to. That it meets, and even surpasses, such expectations is only one of its many achievements

'A richly textured novel with a wondrous story at its heart about the many permutations of love'

A moving meditation on the redemptive power of family and love.

With its almost mystical exploration of love in all its forms, this is a tender portrayal of a family that proves unsinkable

Phillips's characters...are alive and intimately rendered; their warmth suffuses the novel like low-burning embers

At the centre of this unforgettable novel are two chidlren: Lark and her brother, Termite, who is unable to walk or talk but is deeply loved by his family. The two are raised by their aunt Nonie in place of Lola, their mother, and Termite's father, Corporal Robert Leavitt, who is caught up in the chaos of the Korean War. 
 
As the story shifts through time from West Virginia to Korea the mystery of Lola and Nonie's relationship slowly unravels, as does the story of Lark's hopes for herself and Termite, and her own desire for the personal history she has been denied. 
 
The result is a rich and rewarding novel about the power of loss and love, the echoing ramifications of war, family secrets, dreams and ghosts, and the unseen, almost magical bonds that unite and sustain us.

Jayne Anne Phillips

Praise for Lark and Termite

'This novel is cut like a diamond, with such sharp authenticity and bursts of light

Lark and Termite is extraordinary and it is luminous. This is not simply classic Jayne Anne Phillips. This is something far more extraordinary. It is an astounding feat of the imagination. It is the best nov ...

'What a beautiful, beautiful novel this is - so rich and intricate in its drama, so elegantly written, so tender, so convincing, so penetrating, so incredibly moving. I can declare without hesitation or qualificatio ...

'This novel is cut like a diamond, with such sharp authenticity and bursts of light

Lark and Termite is extraordinary and it is luminous. This is not simply classic Jayne Anne Phillips. This is something far more extraordinary. It is an astounding feat of the imagination. It is the best nov ...

'What a beautiful, beautiful novel this is - so rich and intricate in its drama, so elegantly written, so tender, so convincing, so penetrating, so incredibly moving. I can declare without hesitation or qualificatio ...

'This novel is cut like a diamond, with such sharp authenticity and bursts of light

Lark and Termite is extraordinary and it is luminous. This is not simply classic Jayne Anne Phillips. This is something far more extraordinary. It is an astounding feat of the imagination. It is the best nov ...

'What a beautiful, beautiful novel this is - so rich and intricate in its drama, so elegantly written, so tender, so convincing, so penetrating, so incredibly moving. I can declare without hesitation or qualificatio ...

Books by Jayne Anne Phillips

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