Norman Rush, Mating ****

Mating has many of the same strengths as Mortals, the Norman Rush novel I discovered and loved earlier this year. The locale is the same, Botswana, and the narrator is an insecure, self-involved academic who overthinks and filters her experiences through a gauze of literary references. Rush seamlessly combines the story of a romantic relationship between a man and a woman with meditations on the relationship between Western liberal reformers and the Africans they help, discreetly drawing parallels between the two. The partners are more equal in modern relationships, but what aspects of paternalism persist?

Objectively, Mating is the more ambitious book, with a National Book Award to prove it. But even though Mating tosses off more ideas about love and society than Mortals did, I enjoyed it less. Probably because the female narrator's central obsessions -- about the role of (strong) women in relationships -- speak to me less directly than Ray's anxieties about his marriage in Mortals. This middle portion of the book dragged for me.

I'm working my way backwards through Rush's oeuvre. Next will be his first collection of stories, Whites.

Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers **** 1/2

This National Book Award winner and "best book of the year or maybe the decade" (Slate.com) nearly lives up to its hype. The narrative non-fiction charts the lives of several people living in a Mumbai slum tucked between the airport and the Hyatt, shielded from travelers' view by a wall covered with advertisements for Italian tiles that promise to be 'beautiful forever.' It's a sad story for the most part, about people barely surviving, but it captures the day-to-day struggles effectively.

Boo focuses on the details of the people, their story, and the place they live, leaving the larger lessons implicit. Her writing is quite beautiful sometimes, but always in a way that serves her narrative. She packs a lot into a comparatively short book (250 pages); in fact, my only complaint is that I wish she had provided a bit more sociological detail in a few places or filled out a couple of the minor characters.

Very vivid and moving, with a strong sense of place.

Adam Ross, Mr. Peanut ****

The cover of Mr. Peanut and the reviews chosen for excerpting promise meta-fictional hijinks and post-modern twists and turns. The book certainly has those, but the strongest sections are the more traditional narrative ones. The main theme is the difficulties of marriage: how spouses are often at a loss to understand what the other spouse needs, and how it's impossible to understand the dynamics of a relationship from the outside. The main plot is a detective story about whether David Pepin murdered his wife Alice (by means of her peanut allergy), and several characters fluctuate between wanting to resolve their marital difficulties through murder or through reconciliation.

The modern trappings of Mr. Peanut are not as compelling as they could be, but the book has more human feeling than such fictional exercises usually do. I look forward to checking out Adam Ross' next book.