Mating

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Perhaps the praise it received—from Nadine Gordimer, Alice Munro, Joyce Carol Oates and Leslie Marmon Silko, among others—gave Rush the confidence he needed to compose a long novel entirely in the voice of the young anthropologist from “Bruns. For the reader of Mating, love and politics, intimacy and justice, are held in perfect equipoise; the pitfalls and possibilities of both are precisely—and thrillingly—explored to their limits. It seems,” she says, “I was the only educated human being who had never heard of the universally known fact that urea keeps feces from composting properly.

Although I see why some readers comment that the novel should have been edited and that it is digressive, it seems to me they are missing the point.I have been to Botswana, and I know it to be a strange place compared to other African venues, but the main setting of this book is very, very unusual. The novel ends with her back in America, benefiting from her time and experience with Doonan, but seemingly relieved that she escaped the life they would have had together. For a novelist, Rush has an unusual fascination with history, power struggles and left-wing ideology; he once remarked to Granta that “Spanish anarchism,” eradicated by Franco, was “the best lost cause.

I've read a lot, but retain little, because while so many of the critics of this book want something that sticks close to "reality," I find the best books are the ones that invent something totally unusual with characters compelling in their flaws and their virtues. It worked best for me as a satirical depiction of narcissists meddling in lives which, they think, need fixing.At times wildly comic but also magnificently cerebral, Mating is a profound exploration of the human condition and a moving love story, circling the question ‘what do men and women really want?