Mating: A Novel

a provocative story

I enjoyed this book a great deal. It is interesting that the 1st reviewer makes the point that these characters are white and therefore cannot possibly have anything to offer an African. Anyway, be that as it may, this was a good story with a lot of interesting ideas about developement, Africa, male -female relations and conflicts, western civ vs, pastoral communities, socialism vs. capitalism and more. I have several other thoughts about this book. The vocabulary sent me to the dictionary frequently, it is a woman's story written by a man, and we never find out the woman's name in the book in spite of her being the narrator and main character.

pretentious, tedious, and absent eroticism

the idea of a white man creating a utopian community for african women is troubling enough. the relentless pursuit of his affections by an intellectual female is even more so. and the fact that their conversations are solely ideological and peppered with foreign phrases makes slogging through this novel a misadventure in pretention and tedium. this is a love story of unappealing and unreal and unsexy characters.

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