Synopses & Reviews
Termite Parade is the second novel from San Francisco Chronicle best-selling author Joshua Mohr. It is a mature look at the honest side of human interaction.
Derek drops his black-out drunk and verbally abusive girlfriend, Mired, down a flight of stairs in their apartment building on purpose, and then calls his estranged twin brother Frank to help clean up the mess.
Mired thinks she fell and blames herself; Frank knows better; Derek, ravaged with guilt, plays along before ditching town altogether.
Termite Parade examines how Derek, Mired, and Frank cope with the incident, and, more deeply, the concepts of how we love one another; whether individuals are capable of change or whether we simply are who we are; and how capable we are, despite being an extremely intelligent and evolved species, of being savage animals.
Review
"Mohr's prose roams with chimerical liquidity." Boston's Weekly Dig
Review
"[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
Review
"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
Review
"Mired (rhymes with tired) is a woman with rather poor taste in men. One former boyfriend drunkenly urinated in her closet. Another, a dreadlocked white boy, drunkenly shaved her head. Anybody notice a trend here? When she finally met somebody who would tolerate her self-destructive behavior, she dumped him because she didn't want to attend his drum circle. She doesn't hold up much better with her current beau, Derek, who, after enduring an embarrassing drunken rant, drops Mired down a flight of stairs in a moment of blind fury." Gerry Donaghy, Powells.com (read the entire Powells.com review)
Synopsis
A mature second novel from the best-selling author of Some Things That Meant the World to Me.
About the Author
Joshua Mohr is the author of 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 Other Voices, The Cimarron Review, Pleiades, and Gulf Coast, among others. Joshua is a regular contributor to TheRumpus.net, teaches writing in San Francisco, and sings in the band Damn Handsome and The Birthday Suits. Please visit him at joshuamohr.net.