Reviews for Mating: A Novel

The average rating for Mating: A Novel based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-11-07 00:00:00 Kathy Wallace Mating - What a phenomenal achievement. 55-year old author Norman Rush writes his very first novel featuring a 32-year-old female narrator. Sure, she's a bookish, superintellectual with an advanced degree in anthropology from Stanford so Norman can flex his own encyclopedic knowledge, everything from history, sociology and pop culture to agronomy, literature and the arts but our American author goes well beyond usual novel length - Mating weighs in at a whopping 495 pages. An extraordinary novel, Mating lives at the intersection of American seeking, European utopian philosophy and African culture, a book reflecting the author's experience as a Peace Corps worker in Botswana from 1978 to 1983. And keep your dictionary handy as you'll come across vocabulary worthy of Vladimir Nabokov - several examples: passim, anti-makhoa, cinéphile, douceur, omphalos. So, it's 1980 and we're in Gaborone, capital city Botswana, where the unnamed narrator mulls over the many causes why Africa has disappointed her. Norman Rush obviously had his own good reasons for not giving his storyteller a name. Frequently, when writing a review, I'll provide an unnamed narrator with a name but I will respect Mr. Rush and refrain here; rather, I'll simply refer to the narrator as Nar. Oh, Nar, you're such a sweetie. Love ya honey. To imbibe the full impact of her voice and character, not only did I read the novel but I also listened to the audio book expertly narrated by Lauren Fortgang who captured the confident, saucy mindset and speech of brainy Nar. Poor Nar. She would dearly relish the opportunity to form a lasting relationship with an ideal man but what member of the male gender could ever come close to the high standards she sets for potential candidates? Listening to our attractive, scholarly lass lament over this dilemma, I hear a hint of Alison Poole's remark from Jay McInerney's novel Story of My Life: "Let's face it ladies, men are a bunch of dickheads but they're the only opposite sex we've got." Oh, yes, when it comes to a combination of intellect and good looks, Nar tells us flatly, "My preference is always for hanging out with the finalists." Among the finalists she recounts there was burly Brit photographer Giles but, alas, similar to the other men in her life, gentleman Giles turned out to possess way too many flaws. But then it happened - at a posh party, she is introduced to Nelson Denoon, a beautiful, brilliant renaissance man (and a feminist as icing on the cake), a combination intellectual and Action Jackson, someone who actually established a self-sustaining community out in the Kalahari Desert, a community called Tsau, a near perfect utopia to benefit African women who were victims of abuse suffered at the hands of men in male dominated tribal society. The lure is simply too powerful. Denoon is her man. Fast forward past Nar's extensive research and many reflection on society and culture, bondage and freedom (on one level, Mating is a book of ideas) and Nar is off on her expedition to cross one hundred miles of Kalahari Desert on foot, solo, with a donkey, to reach Tsau. After all, what man, even a man like Denoon, wouldn't be impressed with such an bold, death-defying venture? Nar recounts her trek and finally reaching her destination: "I thought it would take me four days, at twenty-five miles a day, to get to Tsau, which it has become emotionally convenient lately for me to refer to inwardly as Pellucidar, after a book in the Tarzan series. It took me six-plus or seven-plus days, one or the other, to get there. Toward the end I was in serious straits. Calling Tsau Pellucidar is partly distancing and partly apposite. Pellucidar sounds like the way Tsau felt to me in one respect: it was like being, for the first time in my existence, in a correctly lighted place. I've never read the book, but I assume Pellucidar was one of the numerous lost and weird but still functioning cities Tarzan visited, and it was in Africa, naturally, although possibly it was at the earth's core, with only the opening leading down to it being in Africa proper." As one would expect, the heart of the novel takes place in Tsau and focuses on Nar's relationship with Nelson Denoon. Many are the opportunities we as readers are given to peer deeper into the character of both Nar and Denoon as they perform many phases of their mating dance (perhaps I should say mating ritual since we are in Africa). Here are four snapshots I found particularly provocative: Argument - "We argued about everything, but a lot of it devolved into arguments about his basic philosophical anthropology. His assumptions were too romantic for me." Such a harsh judgement, Nar! After all, you have done zero to help others in any substantial way, whereas Denoon established the self-sustaining community you are residing at, a community that would continue to thrive even if you didn't trek across the Kalahari. And drawing Nelson into debates on anthropology just might be considered baiting since you told him your area of specialty wasn't anthropology but ornithology. Silence - "He liked us to walk around together in total silence much more than I did. When we finally discussed it I made him laugh by saying I get bored when I'm not talking." Nar goes on to tell us she hates silence. Make not mistake - this is a clear sign of superficiality and weakness in people. Nar is the kind of person who thrives on verbal sparring to establish her intellectual and personal superiority. And also continual internal chatter to reaffirm her identity and relationship to others. From my own experience, when I encounter such combative, talkative people, my tendency is to quickly run in the other direction. Rival - Denoon goes off, just like that, not letting anyone in Tsau know why or where. Instantly Nar concludes Nelson must be conducting a clandestine relationship with one of the women in the community. "It had to be Kakelo, probably. She was less than twenty-five and had a very cute figure, which she tailored her nurse costume to explot." When it is determined Kakelo is in bed with a serious bout of bronchitis, another culprit is pinpointed. Ah, Nar, when you look at the world and other people as one unending competition, your horizons can flatten out quickly. Joy - There are times when our female anthropologist surprises herself on all the positive feelings her life contains. "Anther sign of being in equilibrium must be repeated feelings of equanimity about things that would normally bother you." Throughout Nar's odyssey in Tasu I kept wondering if she is the type of woman who wants a man or who needs a man. One of the abiding questions readers can pose. Closing reflection - In an interview, Norman Rush was asks why he chose to write his novel from the standpoint of a younger woman. He replied: "Hubris made me do it. I know it sounds absurd, but I wanted to create the most fully realized female character in the English language." Curiously, while I was reading, I kept thinking what the novel would have been like if he wrote it with two alternating first-person narrators, the young anthropologist and Nelson Denoon. But this is a minor quibble. I thoroughly enjoyed Mating, a novel that is, above all else, a highly inventive love story. Photo of American novelist Norman Rush taken in 1991, publication year of Mating "My bet, still, is that, all things considered, no woman would have voted to have the washhouse, the stores house, the central kitchen, and the Sekopololo offices located at the top end of a long though gentle ramp. We inhabit male outcomes. Every human settlement is a make outcome. So was Tsau, which was seventy percent complete when the first women moved in." - Norman Rush, Mating

Review # 2 was written on 2008-09-22 00:00:00 Carol Folden A 55 year-old man writing as a 32 year-old woman is a conceit that seems destined to fail. But the narrative voice overwhelms you with its startling combination of neurotic insecurity, hyper-literary pretension and genuine academic insight. About a third of the way I began to wonder if I hadn't stumbled across some sort of post-Nabokovian masterpiece. Then begins the heart of the story, which details her infatuation and love affair with a boring, quasi-messianic, intellectual narcissist. At this point I started to lose interest. The next 200 pages were a slog, and I kept thinking to myself "Honey, you could do better." But then came the story's denouement, in which the narrator's total supplication and abasement seemed so grossly out-of-character that I wanted to throw the book across the room (I would have too, except I finished it on an airplane where this wasn't really an option). I suspect it may have been the author's intention to provoke this sort of reaction, but still it seems a shame to degrade and humiliate this brilliant character he just spent 450 pages building up. Anyway, it confirmed my suspicion that no, a man can't really write as a woman in the first person. But for all that, the author is a major, major talent. Edit: Two years later, I find Rush to be my favorite writer, but oddly I still don't really "like" either of his novels in a conventional sense. Maybe every great, ambitious book has to be flawed like this, like Moby-Dick or Huckleberry Finn. Not changing my 3-star rating, but read this book.