Book Review: Mating by Norman Rush
Rating: 3/5
Mating is a sprawling dissection of an isolated female-driven community in Botswana, designed to be a virtual utopia of female empowerment and solar energy. But it’s really about love. And the death of love. It is hyperintellectual. It’s also dense as fuck. The narrator is overflowing with socio-political allusions, relationship musings and cerebral little puns that are actually pretty funny.
Ultimately, there were plenty of pages that touched and intrigued me, but there were also plenty that exhausted me. The author clearly has a brilliant store of knowledge on developmental theory, philosophy, African culture and pretty much everything other impressive thing there is to know. I won’t say that these sections are boring, but they didn’t do a great job of endearing me to the characters or making me feel connected to them. If anything, expounding on Kafka and Batista detracted from the characters’ development and made them seem somewhat emotionally distant— and this is an a book that explores emotion with excruciating depth.
However, some of my favorite parts of the novel were super astute descriptions of the interplay between local Batswana and white expatriates in Africa. Norman Rush pretty much nails the relationship with quotes like this:“The culture looks familiar but feels alien. The Batswana are not what you would call forthcoming. They murmur when they talk to whites. They have a right to be sick of whites and to show it a little. They want to be opaque at the same time that they’re working on their English and ordering platform shoes from South African mail order houses. The Batswana won’t invite you to dinner, so another avenue to enlightenment is closed to whites. Batswana will without fail accept your invitations to dinner, although they frequently won’t show up. Meal reciprocation is not in the culture. This puts whites off, and they regard the general assertion that Batswana would be delighted to see you if you just dropped by at mealtime as a canard… There are barriers. Americans suffer the most. They come to Botswana wanting to be lovely to Africans. A wall confounds them. Behind it is something they sense is interesting.”
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