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Sep 28, 2010

Stephen rated it:

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 narcissi More...

3 comments like (8 people liked it)

Mar 28, 2008

Marjorie rated it:

This book was really engrossing, at the same time it basically presented me with a vocabulary lesson unlike no other. Literally--I finally just started keeping a list of the words I didn't know, because cracking the dictionary every time got to be chore. It became an exercise in picking up meaning from context. And *still* it was an utterly fabulous read.

Imagine my amusement when right after revisiting Mating after many years due to putting together my Goodreads list, I came across More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Sep 27, 2007

Alexandra rated it:

Maybe I am shallow and narrow and lack the brainpower to fully appreciate this book, but to me it is the best love story. I reference it mentally almost everyday. To cross the Kalahari for the mere chance for a connection! To be a planless drifter in Africa--to be too cutting and smart and still see this chance for love. She is my hero. Endlessly quotable. And the end cracked my heart. I'm gifting it to a boy who would do well to heed Nelson Denoon's example.

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 01, 2009

John rated it:

A brilliant exploration of the limits of human analysis in the face of natural forces. Along with Infinite Jest and Middlemarch, one of the few books I've read that are so impossibly intelligent they seem written by a higher life form. Yes, the vocabulary level seems pretty insane, but given the narrator's education level and insecurity, is completely appropriate.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Jess rated it:

I think the author was trying to see how many fancy SAT words he could fit into one book. He fit in a lot, and it was meh.

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Sarah rated it:

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0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Koharjones rated it:

I fall on the love side for this book.
First, a confession: I read it after spending a semester in a West African nation studying that nebulous concept of "international development." Power, powerless, white black man woman city farmer, lack of water underlying all attempts at societal change.
This book expounds (propounds? sermonizes) on one man's vision of development, as viewed by an enamored woman, in a much more readable manner than the text book that was assigned to m More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 19, 2009

Holly rated it:

I adored this book. I couldn't stand for it to end (but I do know Rush has others, thank goodness!). There are so many ideas in this book - rich w/ thoughts, and all are so human and accessible and fascinating. On some levels it's like reading a book about yourself, no matter where you fit in... human anthropology, why we are attracted to certain people, the history of religion and where it fits, socialism, wealth/poverty, male/female, silence/noise...it's all there! The language is dense and More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 21, 2011

Jenny rated it:

Mating is super smart. On every page, Rush casually name-drops obscure philosophers, touches on long-standing academic debates, and refers to brainy books. It makes you feel smart when you get one (Like, wow! I got that Wallace Stevens reference!), but it makes you feel dumb when you don’t (WTF does perihelion mean again?). Reading this is like reading the encyclopedia, except with more funny. It did feel a little pretentious at times but it taught me words like evaginated, which does not mean w More...

1 comment like

Nov 02, 2009

Sarah rated it:

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0 comments like

Jul 03, 2007

Wendy rated it:

This is one of my favorite books, but I am afraid to read it again and am always afraid to recommend it to other people. Many people dislike it, and it's certainly extremely pretentious. I think it mostly depends on whether you understand and buy that the character is pretentious. I don't know - when I read it, it rang true, particularly the main character's relationship with her ambitions, her strange relationship, and her body.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 12, 2009

Susan rated it:

This book has all the elements that really could qualify it as my favorite book. First, wonderful use of language and real authenticity. The main character is a female doctoral candidate and I honestly checked the front of the book a couple of times thinking I'd mis-read the author's name as "Norma" not "Norman" because of the authenticity of the female voice. I also love to learn more about Africa, and the reader learns loads about Botswana here. Of course, my main qualifica More...

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Mar 10, 2011

Julia rated it:

People tend to either love or hate this book because of the arcane vocabulary, big ideas, and the narcissism/pretentiousness of the unnamed narrator; I loved it. Many of the terms and concepts this book introduced me to have stayed with me. I read it right after returning from a trip to Africa, and felt that it captured the experience of living in another culture better than any other book I've ever read. I still feel that way after years in a career of helping others adjust to American culture. More...

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Aug 12, 2011

Erika rated it:

I did not expect to be giving this book only three stars. It had a lot going for it-- first of all, the fact that the narrator is a neurotic, egregiously overeducated female doctoral student adrift on another continent with a floundering dissertation and a nagging feeling of emptiness certainly made the book easy to relate to (indeed, Rush pulls off the female voice, and particularly the female graduate student voice, so well ) Furthermore, the sparkling effervescence of the prose, bubbling ove More...

0 comments like

Dec 16, 2009

Analia added it

i agree with ann, either you love it or you hate it. and i really disliked it. the characters irritated me, the notion of a failed woman-led utopia in africa that has a white man behind it... i just couldn't get into it at all but it was the kind of book that i forced myself to finish.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 20, 2011

Jafar rated it:

This is the story of a cerebral, overanalyzing woman who doesn’t want the mediocre or the nearly-great and sets her eyes on the one great man that she finds. She’s an anthropology student, working in Botswana on a failed dissertation. He’s an overachieving and well-known intellectual who’s running an experimental matriarchal-utopian village in the middle of the Kalahari. She risks her life to get to him – to get to the “intellectual love.” What follows is an insanely good introspective and analy More...

2 comments like

Dec 16, 2009

Sarah rated it:

recommended to me by my friend jesse. the fact that he recommended the book made me realize he was the kind of person you make an effort to keep in touch with, so that you don't get featureless inside as you get farther from the hyper-reality of being in your early twenties.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 24, 2010

Thorne rated it:

What's most fascinating to me about this book -- a book about the psychic dynamics of heterosexual couplings -- is that it's written by a man, from the perspective of a woman. Which in many places is hard to avoid reading almost as a field guide to the variety of men's ego sensitivities, the ones that most men would at all costs deny having or exposing.

One slightly annoying technical aspect of the novel is the constant pseudo-academic elbow patches jargon. Id est, I can't believe e More...

0 comments like

Jan 13, 2009

Vincent rated it:

Dear Sirs and Madams,

This book could have easily received five stars if Mr. Rush knew how to stick a landing.

M,

V

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 26, 2011

Alan rated it:

There were many interesting aspects to this long and difficult novel. It was written by a male, but the narrator was female. I find in most cases this never works; however somehow this does. It was set mostly in Africa about an Anthropologist trying to start a female-centric community against all the norms of the existing culture. It touched on the geo-politics of South Africa during Apartheid and the inherent tensions of western culture imposing certain ideals on a developing nation. In so More...

0 comments like

Aug 25, 2009

Laurie rated it:

Norman Rush is really, really smart and well-informed. The book is crammed full of philosophy, political economy, literature, and vocabulary (interpocula, noumenal, gravid, adumbrating...). Yet, despite its size, it's a fascinating read. It focuses on white foreigners in Botswana, a revolutionary man, a woman who finds him interesting, and the whole question of how a society changes. A non-representative bit that I liked: "One thing you never want to hear a man you're interested in say More...

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Jul 24, 2011

Lindsey rated it:

This book explores male-female dynamics in excruciating depth. Two intellectuals fall in love in Africa, and the storyline details the trajectory of their relationship.

Interestingly enough, the narrator of the book is female, while the author himself is male. This is one of the things that drew me to the book; I wanted to see how the author handled the feminine perspective.

For the most part, the author has done quite well drawing his heroine as an intelligent and daring char More...

0 comments like

Jul 21, 2010

Karen rated it:

A truly great book. Mostly it is a feminist love story or, at least, a love story with a feminist main character. I recommend it to all women my age, not because I think they’ll learn anything in particular from it, but because I think they’ll enjoy it. Many things rang true. In fact, at first, I was struck by the overwhelming sense that I was reading my own self, not what I would write if I were a writer, but that the “I” that I was reading was thinking and feeling and acting exactly as I w More...

1 comment like

Aug 25, 2011

Meredith rated it:

Much like the other reviewers of this book, I noted each word that I came across while reading that I didn't know. There will probably 4-5 per page, and the book nears 600 pages.
I enjoyed the treatment of the characters and felt that I was close to truly understanding them. Much of Botswana was revealed through the book, but my energy for reading waned throughout the last third. The action ceased and it became droning. I had to force myself to finish just so that I could put this book b More...

0 comments like

Dec 01, 2008

Callie rated it:

Another of my favorites I have read in my adult life. This man is a genius. He can write about any topic under the sun. And his analysis of a relationship between a man and a woman is as complicated and as fascinating as the real thing. If you want to read something deeply textured, passionate, exotic, highly intelligent, and funny, read Norman Rush. I don't even know anyone who is writing right now who compares to him. I've also read Mortals, and I highly recommend it, too. Another bonus, the n More...

0 comments like

Apr 22, 2011

Jenny rated it:

This was an interesting book for me, because I identified on many levels with the narrator, who is 32 (check), redheaded (I pretend), and an anthropology student on a bit of hiatus from her research (I started out in ethnomusicology, which is a branch of it). So even though the author is a middle-aged man, it is interesting to see his take on what a woman of that place in life would think/do. I liked seeing a woman who wasn't trivial, was a thinker, maybe even an overthinker, which to me was s More...

1 comment like

May 14, 2011

Marcelo rated it:

An absolute revelation, a truly original book that never goes where you expect it to. I was so excited about this book halfway through that I started looking up other works by Rush, reading some of his earlier short stories and now looking forward to reading "Mortals" - I just couldn't believe i had never heard of him, to be honest. The voice is so distinctive and real, it holds your interest throughout. The parallel stories - that of the narrator's personal relationship with a man she More...

0 comments like

Oct 20, 2010

Alexandria rated it:

By the time I finished reading this book I felt like I had accomplished something far greater than just reading a book...Norman Rush wrote this book in the first person, however, the main character is female. He truly took the time to explore and dissect the female mind for all the incredible insights and streams of consciousness recorded within these pages.

This novel is also a lesson in vocabulary...maybe an average of one word per page that required some pondering, or the utiliz More...

0 comments like

Jan 18, 2010

Megan rated it:

Where to begin? Words are so dinky when you are trying to use them to describe a book you love. Though I'm sure Norman Rush would have no trouble if it were someone else's, and not his, book being adored. I'm sure that he'd not only have the words, but he'd have the perfect ones; ones you'd have to look up, but when you read the definition you think, Ah: the sentiment could not have been conveyed better.

I did have to keep the dictionary at my side while reading this, but I was gra More...

9 comments like

Oct 20, 2010

Sara rated it:

"I grew up clinging to the idea that either I was original in an unappreciated way or that I could be original - this later - by incessant striving and reading and taking simple precautions like never watching television again in my life."

'Mating' is a difficult novel to pin down. Oddly enough for a book that concerns itself with anthropology, it refuses to allow itself to be defined or categorized in any clear way. It's a romance, one written in a dynamic, spirited female vo More...

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