Sometime next week you should finish Lark & Termite. Whatever expectations Phillips created for you and whatever appetites she cultivated will have been satisfied or frustrated or--perhaps most likely--modulated into a somewhat different set of expectations and desires you couldn't have predicted when you set out. Maybe you bought into those, maybe not. Chances are you could say right away, without any reflection, whether you found the novel satisfying or not. But having read your way through it you've now got enough experience to answer this question more reflectively. Use one of the following prompts to get your blog entry started. Or, if you have an idea of your own, start there.

1. If you changed your mind about something as you were reading, describe what it was that changed and think some about what the novel does to make that happen. Stories that interest or entertain or move us do so strategically. Can you point to a strategic move Phillips makes in the novel and reflect on how it affected you?

2. Some kinds of stories including folk tales and the most basic (or cheesiest) forms of genre fiction depend on "stock characters," figures so standard and familiar we need little introduction or detail to recognize them. By contrast, literary fiction in our time depends on the development of subtle, complex characters--people readers want to know and understand and even analyze. Choose a character in this novel and think about how Phillips develops her or him over the course of the novel--opening questions, peeling back layers, filling in details. Write about that.

3. We talked on Thursday (January 17) about disequilibrium at the beginning of a narrative and about the various ways things are out of balance at the start of this novel. Does the end of the novel restore equilibrium? Create a new kind of equilibrium? How does the idea of equilibrium help you make sense of the way this novel ends? Or doesn't it?