Rating: 
Summary: Give us another, please, Mr. Rush.
Review: Don't read this book if you do not have an academic turn of mind. The vocabulary is out of sight but is just part of the fun. I did not know what I was getting into. I saw on the cover that the book had won a national award and I knew I was going to be spending two weeks in a hammock in Panama so I bought it and was thrilled to learn that it takes place in Botswana where I had visited before with the terrific books of Alexander McCall Smith and the Miss Marple of Botswana. I read every sentence and laughed out loud many times. The ending itself is funny. The protaganist gets herself so zonked out on her honey that she has to repete exactly the foibles of her predecesor when he is for once, just trying to be honest with her. Of course, she is young and believes in everything she learned in college. I certainly hope Rush is rushing to get another big fat careful novel out to us.
Rating:
Summary: Give us another, please, Mr. Rush.
Review: Don't read this book if you do not have an academic turn of mind. The vocabulary is out of sight but is just part of the fun. I did not know what I was getting into. I saw on the cover that the book had won a national award and I knew I was going to be spending two weeks in a hammock in Panama so I bought it and was thrilled to learn that it takes place in Botswana where I had visited before with the terrific books of Alexander McCall Smith and the Miss Marple of Botswana. I read every sentence and laughed out loud many times. The ending itself is funny. The protaganist gets herself so zonked out on her honey that she has to repete exactly the foibles of her predecesor when he is for once, just trying to be honest with her. Of course, she is young and believes in everything she learned in college. I certainly hope Rush is rushing to get another big fat careful novel out to us.
Rating: 
Summary: well, i liked it very much
Review: heavens!
some of the reviewers of this novel are quite ugly in their assessments of the book--and the author. well, i liked it very much. i thought the story unique and compelling. its settings of academia, anthropology, africa, culture, sex, and politics(personal and national), and its main character, a very smart, sexy woman, was very enjoyable. i was not put off by the language, the intelligence of the characters (or the author), or the ideas that swirled in the lives of these thoughtful characters. some of these reviewers need to lighten up! if a work is not your 'cup of tea', (and i use that line given what appear to be some very sensitive sensibilities among some of these reviewers), then set it aside, or write a review saying you prefer 'earl grey, please'. calling this work, whatever its specific limitations or challenges, 'garbage', is, well, absurd and dismissable. one final comment. i thought this one of the best novels regarding obsessive love i've read in years. having fallen--hard, once or twice myself, this novel unexpectedly had me reexperience(indulge in) the memory-not distant, of the dizzy, heady, aching (and yes, overarticulate, as any friend of someone in heartsick love can attest to!) passion that love can occasionally generate. i didn't survive in either instance. i like to believe she did.
Rating: 
Summary: I am so angry that I read 250 pages of this book
Review: I am only comforted by the fact that every one of the members of my book club also hated it as much as I did.Every one of the 250 pages I read was a mighty struggle because I just didn't care about or believe in any of the characters or events. I am stunned that it won a National Book Award. I am actually furious about that. The story was ridiculously contrived. (Denoon's ex-wife randomly but desperately wishes to introduce the narrator to her estranged husband in hopes they will become lovers ?!? The author requires a freak sandstorm to cut off one of Denoon's boring, lengthy philosophical rants?!?) Come on! Tell me a story I can believe! Give me characters that are at least realistic if not sympathetic. Don't waste my time with tangential details that have NOTHING to do with the development of plot or character or ideas. The book is long enough. I do not need to hear about the narrator's musings that "the lion man" who helps direct her to Tsau (and who really has no part whatsoever in the story) might dye his hair. The book struck me as very similar to a science fiction book for adolescent males except that it was about an absurdly unbelievable utopian society set in Botswana instead of in a galaxy far far away and it was studded with ridiculous words that nobody uses. It was not about people. It was certainly not about women. It may have been about Norman Rush's fantasy of a beautiful young anthropologist becoming totally hot for him because of his gigantic intellect and his nice abs. Hmmmm . . . I thought this book was terrible. ... If you do not find it amusing - if you find it, in fact, annoying, then stop right there. Do not waste another second of your time. Read The Corrections instead.
Rating:
Summary: Worst book I've ever read
Review: I cannot emphasize enough how much I would advise against reading this book. I was annoyed and offended within the first two pages but forced myself through it since I was reading it for a book club. (About 9 of the 10 book club members detested the book as well.) The language was poor, the characters contrived and the relationship intangible. The book attempted a "feminist" angle which was weak and formulaic. I did not identify with characters and remained very concious of the author. Probably the most troublesome part of this book was the portrayal of African people. (Having a degree in anthropology, some background in African history and culture, and having spent some time in Zimbabwe, I feel this rant is justified.) From early on, Rush recogizes that his character associates only with ex-pat whites and has no personal relationships with Africans. This does not mean, however, that he gives any recognition or insight into the ex-patriot subculture. On the contrary, we're supposed to trust the characters and their experience by virtue of being anthropologists. Later, her love interest establishes a supposed designed society of women from various ethnic groups. Rush ignores the fact that Africans, like anyone else, have cultural backgrounds and affinities. They are not a blank slate to be manipulated, (though African colonial history shows that Rush was not the first person to think so). His proposition would be difficult for individuals giving up everything they knew and believed. Furthermore, it would be difficult to mix ethnic groups without culture clashes, or confronting historic rivalries. Rush dehumanizes the African characters. This is particularly clear when we notice that only one of this society is really portrayed as an individual. My major concern is that people with little background or experience with Africa will be influenced by this book. For some good books, I'd recommend Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, God's Bits of Wood by Sembene Ousmane, Bones by Chenjerai Hove, or for a taste of early Europeans in Africa I like Beryl Markham's autobiography "West with the Night." I'd like intrepid readers to understand how eclectic Africa is.
Rating:
Summary: I almost threw this one out the window...almost.
Review: I picked this one up a day before departing for an overland trip through east Africa. I thought,'Hmm, a book about Africa, perfect for a trip to Africa.' As some of you might know, there are hours of time to kill while cruising tarmac roads, and this was the only book available to me (I tried to trade with someone, albeit after having declared to everyone, 'This book wants to take a trip out the window!'). So I read it.
I've often had problems with characters I think could no way exist in our society, composites of real people the author knows, carrying on as if society has no effect on them. But fiction, this wonderful genre, is all about showing how people could carry on, how they could behave. And Rush shows how a person with the narrator's attributes, education, experiences could behave in the situation at hand. Yes, I have issues with the narrator's thought processes and I rolled my eyes at her overuse of vocabulary, but she is one interesting character. And the fact that she evoked such an emotional response from me is the reason I have to give this novel its propers.
Rating:
Summary: Vocabulary/shmo-cabulary
Review: Just finished slogging through this book and haven't completely swept the disgust from my attitude so I'll concede to a slight amount of overkill here... Having been compelled to read this book after reading a review of his latest, I opened this anxiously with a basic notion of the book's thrust which I found interesting. Also, a man writing a novel with the main character a woman had potential. As the main character began to reveal herself as somewhat obsessive and neurotic I found no reason for concern. However, as each chapter passed I found myself having less and less sympathy, let alone empathy for this character. Her over-hyped claims to feminism or at least individualism were completely swamped in her high-fallutin'(ridiculously so) vocabulary and her wanton, neurotic hounding of Denoon, the object of her obsession. Given the fact that Denoon was the progenitor of a utopian community which was woman-based and that he truly had the seeds of a revolutionary I can't imagine him ever being attracted to this needy, groping, grotesque woman. I can't sort out whether the author was bloated with self-congratulation because he was writing through a woman's voice or if he truly is misogynistic. Having the trappings of a really interesting story (utopia run by women) couldn't even remotely save this book from one of the least sympathetic, uninteresting and annoying characters I've ever read. If this is Rush's idea of what an interesting woman is I'm stunned. I found myself unsatisfied at the end that something truly horrible hand't happened to her. Don't bother with it. This is a really self-important, unenlightened piece of writing disguised as a pro-feminist work and no amount of "I betcha don't know this word!" vocabulary can save it... on the contrary.
Rating:
Summary: Most will want to avoid this good book
Review: Look upon this book as an "advanced" novel; one full of Latin phrases, clever witticisms, inventive musings and the like. One of last and most important lines of the novel is in French! (thankfully, I speak some French. Do you?) It's a heady book, a venture into the cerebral mind of the narrator and the cerebral love into which she falls. Reading this book was like two experiences in one: first, it was like an incredible dinner conversation, at a table with brilliant people (one that goes on a bit too long, though). And second, reading the book was an arduous journey through the Kalahari Desert--beautiful creatures, deep thoughts, and awesome mirages, but without quite enough water along the way.
Rating:
Summary: When Porcupines Mate
Review: Mating is a chronicle of one woman's fascinating experiences in Botswana circa 1980 and centers on her love affair with the archetypal man-of-action, Nelson Denoon, an academic superstar who has developed from scratch a remote, self-sustaining village inhabited and administered by dispossessed African women. The narrator, whose name we never learn, is an erudite anthropology MA of 32 who is struggling over her thesis and what occupation to pursue in life. After learning about Denoon's secret village she risks great peril in crossing the desert in order to cling to him and become his Boswell. She is not near so much interested in this unique and interesting village, or love, as she is in the spectacle of Denoon himself. Rush gives an impressive portrait of both Denoon and the woman in this novel. It is truly an accomplishment in itself that Rush narrates in the first person as this thoroughly convincing woman. There is also a gripping story being told here that makes this novel much more than the erudite account of two big brains in Africa that it primarily is. The splendid prose is lucid and filled with uncommon and exotic words and foreign expressions, used not at all pretentiously or superfluously.
The prose carries the novel and the story makes it worth the trip, but there is a lot to the charge that it is too self-conscious in a way that would make even Proust turn in his grave. Nothing about the woman's life is kept from us and we are bombarded with painful, obsessive over-analysis of ever aspect of life, even the most minute and seemingly trivial things. Everything in the world, every comment, every movement, is put under the microscopic lens of her academicians eye. Since she is an expert on everything, from psychology to political science, the reader is flooded with theory, often interesting, but often banal and misplaced. Rush may be putting her and Denoon's self-consciousness up to parody, if not the theories themselves, but the problem is I think he wants it both ways, and this cannot be to the novel's credit. Reading Proust, there is no mistaking that we are seeing into the author's mind's eye; reading Rush, we have an uneasy feeling that the joke is on us.
Rating:
Summary: a love affair with language
Review: My second reading of Mating left me exhilarated, much like the first. This remains one of my favorite books of all time. One of the reasons is the author's love of language: not only does he know how to capture nuances in feeling and intellectual discourse; he knows that language is what distinguishes human from animal mating. The author loves to make up word endings, or new usages, and this is as thrilling as any other discovery, and this book is full of them, including the reader's realization that the author's abandoned thesis is re-written as nothing less than a study of Denoon, or the intellectuall male as viewed by the equally intellectually precocious female anthropologist. Margaret Mead meets Margaret Atwood. After a while, i just put away the dictionary and plunged on. The book is rewarding. I recommend it, with the caveat that parts of the journey are difficult, but ultimately well worth taking. Pourquoi pas?
|
