Termite Parade

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)