Rating: 
Summary: Life Among the Males
Review: As your typical "Mating" fan, I was surprised to find "Mortals" devoid of the Golden Notebook atmosphere of Rush's first book. Instead, "Mortals" takes us deep into the mind and maturation of a Saul Bellow-esqe everyman, Ray Finch. Ray's painful coming of age is forced by a sequence of losses not atypical for someone coming to the end of middle age. In Ray's case, his usual coping skills of retreat, denial and genteel manipulation prove completely inadequate, and he must strip his life to the bones to build a new foundation. While the inside of Ray's mind is not as whimsically decorated as that of "Mating"'s protagonist, Ray is rewarding because we are much more likely to meet (or be) someone like him. Unlike "Mating", "Mortals" takes place in a very real world. My heart ached for the characters - their oscillations between venality, generosity, cruelty, idealism, and the many gray states where we spend most of our lives are so exactly those of people whom I know. Botswana plays its role again as an entrancing supporting character: however, this time Rush shows us the country's CNN side, culminating in scenes of armed conflict. Bertrand Russell meets "Apocalypse Now". Rush's prose is, as usual, captivating. Even so, "Mortals" is unquestionably prolix. But hang in there for the last few chapters, a bang-up ending that had me outlining a screenplay.
Rating:
Summary: Life Among the Males
Review: As your typical "Mating" fan, I was surprised to find "Mortals" devoid of the Golden Notebook atmosphere of Rush's first book. Instead, "Mortals" takes us deep into the mind and maturation of a Saul Bellow-esqe everyman, Ray Finch. Ray's painful coming of age is forced by a sequence of losses not atypical for someone coming to the end of middle age. In Ray's case, his usual coping skills of retreat, denial and genteel manipulation prove completely inadequate, and he must strip his life to the bones to build a new foundation. While the inside of Ray's mind is not as whimsically decorated as that of "Mating"'s protagonist, Ray is rewarding because we are much more likely to meet (or be) someone like him. Unlike "Mating", "Mortals" takes place in a very real world. My heart ached for the characters - their oscillations between venality, generosity, cruelty, idealism, and the many gray states where we spend most of our lives are so exactly those of people whom I know. Botswana plays its role again as an entrancing supporting character: however, this time Rush shows us the country's CNN side, culminating in scenes of armed conflict. Bertrand Russell meets "Apocalypse Now". Rush's prose is, as usual, captivating. Even so, "Mortals" is unquestionably prolix. But hang in there for the last few chapters, a bang-up ending that had me outlining a screenplay.
Rating: 
Summary: What fools they be.
Review: At the opening of "Mortals," Ray Finch is a happy man. He adores his wife, Iris. His work as a Milton expert at an elite school in early-1990s Botswana is really just a front for his real job, that as a contract agent for the CIA. He loves this job, and he also loves his handler. And you had better love Ray, because this book never gets out of his head. Unfortunately, it is hard to love Ray. His level of self-absorption is extraordinary. In his adoration of Iris he wants her to exist only for him. When she seeks the help of a counselor for depression, Ray decides that she's having an affair with the man-she must be because his obsession with her should be enough to make her happy. He tries to get his creepy new CIA station chief to let him compile a file on the counselor, an African-American new to Botswana. The chief wants Ray to focus his attentions on a Botswanan recently returned from England whom Ray sees as not only harmless, but rather admirable. Ray begins to seethe. And what does Ray do to help himself assimilate all these changes? He talks. Dear God, does he talk. Everyone in "Mortals" talks far too much. Ray and Iris indulge in these unbelievably boring talk-fests that I advise you now to skip if you want to survive the trek to "Mortals" last page. Neither of these people is interesting enough to make half, even a third, of what they have to say compelling, especially since Iris exists only through Ray's limited vision. Once Ray gets sent on a mission in the bush-and away from Iris-things pick up. Then the talking goes on entirely in his head, but it is tempered by your hope that something is actually going to happen. "Mortals" works when it talks about African politics, history, customs, or traditions. You want to know more about the African characters, while you wish the expats would just shut up. The last third of the novel gels (Ray is literally gagged for part of it), but this is still a highly overrated and overhyped work that needed an editor's machete. At half the length, Norman Rush could have gotten his point across without taking advantage of the goodwill of readers who have waited more than ten years for a follow-up to "Mating."
Rating: 
Summary: Better than my real vacation was the one I was in in my head
Review: I didn't read this book at first because of one negative review (it was before the rave reviews started). But friends kept mentioning Mortals, and nagging me about reading it, because they wanted people to talk to about the experience of reading it, a reading experience which is hard to describe, it's so unusual. So I did end up taking it on vacation with me. The thing I'll always remember about my 2003 vacation isn't the beaches and sun of Massachusetts, but the desert and sun of Africa. Forget MA, I was in Africa! The reading of this funny, fascinating, emotional, exciting, suspenseful, deep love/adventure story was an intense and beautiful experience. What an artist Mr. Rush is. I can't believe anyone now writing could do what he did in this book. If you love great literature, read it.
Rating:
Summary: Huge Disappointment
Review: I enjoyed Mating so much, especially the first half. As for Mortals, all I can say is that somewhere, in a safe deposit box, Norman Rush has some very damaging photos of his editor.
Rating:
Summary: I WANTED IT TO GO ON FOREVER... it has everything
Review: I felt like I couldn't bear Mortals to end. I felt the same about Mating when I read it, and I have read it twice. (A friend of mine has read Mating four times.) I'm going to wait a month and read Mortals again. IT HAS EVERYTHING. Plot, suspense, deep thought, deep emotion, great characters, hilarious lines on every page. It has "content," too. Ideas. It has a lot of sex, but it's unusual, because it's not just hot affairs, it is all about a couple who love each other, and the sex is very emotional and touching. It has violence, but it's so unusual, the way it's done. Spiritual, almost. It has amazing descriptions of family relations. The main guy, Ray the spy, has a gay brother I will never forget. The African revolutionary is unforgettable. The black American doctor the wife starts going to for therapy (and gets sexually involved with, which drives her husband crazy, just as other things are happening in his life) is also unforgettable. I'd say that the thing that most distinguishes Mortals from any other novel (with the exception of Mating) is that it's so full of the most interesting things that every sentence is a feast. I couldn't put it down, and was so sad when I had finished the last page. It's not "Lit Lite," it's Lit Great, great in every way. There are characters and scenes in Mortals that you will never forget. As you can see, I'm one who loves this book as much as any I have read.
Rating: 
Summary: Horrible
Review: I read enthusiastically so-called 'novels of ideas' -- but this is bereft of ideas and really is junk. I am so mad I wasted my time reading 700 pages of small type text. The characters do not act or speak true to them themselves, especially the principal woman character, Iris. There's a one-chapter speech that at least is shorter than the speech in Atlas Shrugged, but must be on what people base the contention that this is an intellectual novel -- boring, boring, boring. The prose is fairly leaden. The setting is exotic, but one doesn't really learn that much about Botswana as a result (see Kapuchinski, Shadow of the Sun to learn about Africa). Maybe people like the fairly abundant sex or sexual content in the book.
I could not more highly discourage you from reading this book. Amazing to me the positive reviews it has received.
Rating:
Summary: I rarely would rate a book a 5
Review: In one word: BRILLIANT. It's true, it might not be everybody's cup of tea. But if you like books that are literate, that take you to a place you've never been before and put you in the head of its protagonist then you'll love this book. I wanted to go on with the characters and find out what happens to them. And the ideas keep coming at you, but all part of an engaging story. Go for it.
Rating:
Summary: I rarely would rate a book a 5
Review: In one word: BRILLIANT. It's true, it might not be everybody's cup of tea. But if you like books that are literate, that take you to a place you've never been before and put you in the head of its protagonist then you'll love this book. I wanted to go on with the characters and find out what happens to them. And the ideas keep coming at you, but all part of an engaging story. Go for it.
Rating:
Summary: Only for the seriously pretentious
Review: Let's see, besides our protagonist being a nominal Milton scholar (though like all the other literary lights cited in this book, there is no real connexion with any of Milton's works in this book), we have the following names dropped, seemingly gratuitously throughout this opus: James Joyce (5 times), Yeats (5 times), Thoreau (3 times), Bertrand Russell (2 times), Ezra Pound (2 times), Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson (at least 3), Matthew Arnold, Jack London....and I stopped counting after that. Come now, does anyone save a literary groupie really appreciate all this display of superficial literary knowledge? Is it really intrinsic to the story? ---Here: My favourite example of the inanity of these quasi-literary speculations by Ray-" 'The drop that wrestles in the sea/Forgets her own locality' was from Emily Dickinson, a poet he hadn't read attentively enough, since clearly she had something to say to him.".....And, well, what is it? Never mind, no time for serious pondering. It's on to more Yeats among others before the paragraph ends (p.351). - The one exception to all this name dropping is Ray's recital of Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach." to Morel. But, as is commonplace, the exception proves the rule here. - I could go on about how disappointing the meretricious scholarship is in this work: Is Morel serious about citing Matthew 15:24 as proof that Jesus came only for the Jews? Is Rush? Anyone who has read the whole chapter knows that this is where Jesus turns to the Gentiles and heals the Canaanite's daughter because the Jews have rejected him. Is Rush trying to show that Morel's idealism about a non-Christian Africa is superficial and misplaced? Or is Rush simply showboating himself---I very much fear that it's the latter. 2 Stars for the few poignant passages on conjugal love. But, in the end, I would have come away much more enriched had I spent the time reading actual literature: Joyce, Yeats, Wordsworth, Dickinson........Milton.
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