We are starting a new feature here at Brazenhead – Book of the Mouth Club.  A place to recommend books, not new ones, although the titles may be new to some.  I have long been obsessed with neglected and forgotten work, but these days it seems books get forgotten at a much quicker pace than ever before.  Some disappear before they’ve had their fifteen minutes or even found a parking spot in the overcrowded to be read pile that lives in the backsides of our brains.

The first book I’d like to bring to your attention is ‘Mating' by Norman Rush, which, although it won The National Book Award for fiction in 1991, has still managed to slip away, and certainly not garnered the readership a masterpiece like this deserves.

Rush writes as if from a different era in a style we are not generally accustomed to, and the sense of displacement from time that results suits the story. A story that deals with the questions of how we live our lives. How modern or how traditional, what mixture...