Mating: A Novel (National Book Award Winner)
Oct 2011 · Sold by Vintage
4.0star
4 reviews
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496
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About this ebook
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • Is love between equals possible? This modern classic is a delightful intellectual love story that explores the deepest canyons of romantic love even as it asks large questions about society, geopolitics, and the mystery of what men and women really want.
“Luminous . . . Few books evoke the state of love at its apogee.” —The New York Times Book Review
“The best rendering of erotic politics . . . since D.H. Lawrence. . . . The voice of Rush’s narrator is immediate, instructive and endearing.”—The New York Review of Books
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
The narrator of this splendidly expansive novel of high intellect and grand passion is an American anthropologist at loose ends in the South African republic of Botswana. She has a noble and exacting mind, a compelling waist, and a busted thesis project. She also has a yen for Nelson Denoon, a charismatic intellectual who is rumored to have founded a secretive and unorthodox utopian society in a remote corner of the Kalahari—one in which he is virtually the only man.
What ensues is an exhilarating quest and an exuberant comedy of manners: “A dryly comic love story about grown-up people who take the life of the mind seriously.” —Newsweek
“Luminous . . . Few books evoke the state of love at its apogee.” —The New York Times Book Review
“The best rendering of erotic politics . . . since D.H. Lawrence. . . . The voice of Rush’s narrator is immediate, instructive and endearing.”—The New York Review of Books
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
The narrator of this splendidly expansive novel of high intellect and grand passion is an American anthropologist at loose ends in the South African republic of Botswana. She has a noble and exacting mind, a compelling waist, and a busted thesis project. She also has a yen for Nelson Denoon, a charismatic intellectual who is rumored to have founded a secretive and unorthodox utopian society in a remote corner of the Kalahari—one in which he is virtually the only man.
What ensues is an exhilarating quest and an exuberant comedy of manners: “A dryly comic love story about grown-up people who take the life of the mind seriously.” —Newsweek
Ratings and reviews
4.0
4 reviews
Marcelo T
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November 19, 2014
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's obsessed with at an intellectual level, and that of Tsau, the utopian development community this man has brought to life and is struggling to move forward; do not just mirror but also complement and inform each other. The main question posed here on both fronts seems to be "can an ideal sustain itself against the reality of its component parts, or is it bound to slowly wither and fade one detail at a time". The answer of course is never clear, but the pleasure is in the telling. It's at times heady stuff, but delivered with brio and wit and humanity. I plan on rereading this book in the near future for sure.
About the author
Norman Rush is the author of four works of fiction: Whites, a collection of stories, and three novels, Subtle Bodies, Mating, and Mortals. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Best American Short Stories. Mating was the recipient of the National Book Award. Rush and his wife live in Rockland County, New York.
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