Mating : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Adventures in the Kalahari
Review: Should an overly-ambitious novel be criticized for reaching too far, or should it be praised for all that it does achieve? Both, in my opinion, and so this book falls into that rare category of works that I have strong feelings for, both positive and negative. It's easy to call this a "big book" or a "tour de force," and you wouldn't be wrong for doing so. It is grand in intellectual scope, exploring themes both broadly and deeply. But at the same time I wonder if this book might have been better if it had aimed a bit lower. I'm thinking here specifically of major books that took on important issues of the day, but did so more simply, and ultimately more successfully. To Kill A Mockingbird comes to mind, perhaps the most important work of fiction ever on racism and social inequality in America. That book achieved its status of immortality not in spite of its brevity, but because of it. And I think Mating would have been more successful if Rush had taken a similar approach, instead of the Ayn Rand formula, which seems to work wonderfully for her but not for anyone else.

This is still a four-star book, however, and I would recommend it to friends without reservation. It is a book that makes you think about important issues, like poverty and social inequality and the injustices of the patriarchal structure. The ending, I have to admit, left me asking questions, and not in a good way. For a 500-page book it felt abrupt and somewhat disconnected from the rest of the book. But it's still worth definitely worth reading, and worthy of the National Book Award that it received.