“Coral Gables was a reunification fantasy” (Phillips 25).
Throughout the novel, Florida is a symbol of flourishing. It
is how Lola and Leavitt would have flourished if Leavitt had survived the war.
They would have lived with Termite and brought Lark and Termite down to visit.
Although this is not the reality with which Phillips presents us, she manages
to reestablish Florida as this place of not only Lark and Termite reuniting
with their roots but also to start a new utopian life in their own family unit
with Solly providing a way for the readers to be satisfied in seeing Lark being
able to have her own womanly life, yet with Termite still a part of it. Finally
by the end of the novel the reader is freed from Florida as Gladdy’s “retirement
home” and gets the ideal family he/she wished for in Florida at last, just in a
roundabout and unexpected way nine years later (231).
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