Response to Mating

   Had Jane Austen been in the Peace Corps in Africa in the 1980s, Mating is the book she might have written. Norman Rush's novel is, essentially, a comedy of manners played out in Austen's approved milieu: a country village. Granted, the village in question, Tsau, is a utopian society created by the great American anthropologist Nelson Denoon, and run largely by and for disenfranchised and abused African women.
  I can find that Mating is a fiercely intelligent, hugely ambitious novel that takes on feminism, socialism, political corruption, foreign-sponsored rural development projects.And the idea of utopian societies are fun to imagine but will man ever fulfill this world and create a society without flaw. Even the utopian society which are not even real have flaws. The world of women though seemingly perfect has one flaw. It is too perfect. A world without struggle and differences only set up boredom and a lack of character. So Tsau must be unable to continue.