One man's paradise lost in Africa

In fact, language is Rush's real interest in "Mortals." African rebels, the Botswana landscape, and the complex political crises tearing through this country remain on the periphery, slipping through Ray's mental patter like snippets of conversation from another table. Even voluminous Milton seems shrunken by his appreciation.

Not surprisingly, Iris hungers for different voices, but Ray's all-consuming adoration leaves no space. He's annoyed by her concern for her sister back in the States. He resents the witty letters his gay brother sends her. And when Iris seeks psychiatric treatment from a doctor newly arrived from Boston, Ray can't resist abusing the tools of his trade to investigate (and silence) this imagined rival.

Dr. Morel isn't just an anti-Ray, though. He's a self-proclaimed antichrist, determined to lift the yoke of Christian subservience from the neck of Africa. "Faith is a toxin," he announces, and "obedience ultimately kills," an argument that doesn't rest comfortably alongside Ray's favorite, "Paradise Lost."

Rush takes many risks in this lengthy novel, but his decision to transcribe one of Dr. Morel's antireligion lectures is perhaps the most daring. Even more so, because Rush is the ultimate double agent in this slippery narrative. Just as Dr. Morel's analysis of the horrors inflicted by Christian doctrine begins to sound irrefutable, Ray picks his argument apart, pointing out facts that contradict the doctor's thesis and scoffing at his naiveté.

Halfway through, the novel seems ready to burst under the strain of all these disparate themes, but then "Mortals" makes yet another startling shift, moving from domestic drama to cultural debate to military adventure.

Determined to extinguish some political trouble that he's inadvertently aggravated, Ray leaves Iris and heads into the bush, where he endures depravation and torture. In a surreal battle scene, words - torrents of words - become an effective defense against bullets and bombs. But the novel's relentless attention to Ray's mind in the middle of this mayhem sometimes drags these exciting scenes into slow motion, creating a narrative that's alternately panoramic and microscopic, rousing and sluggish.

The cost of Rush's determination to capture every synapse in Ray's brain becomes most burdensome in a final sex scene so overextended that hyperventilating teens and prissy puritans will run their yellow highlighters dry. Never has eroticism been so laborious.

But the ambition of this unwieldy masterpiece is so heroic that ultimately its weaknesses seem more like tragic flaws, defining qualities we can lament but can't imagine "Mortals" without. Rush has recreated the mental life of an original man from the ground up, raising a host of profound questions about the limits of love and language. Readers who endure to the end - perhaps "fit but few" - will consider for a long time how Ray and Iris "take their solitary way."

• Ron Charles is the Monitor's book editor. Send e-mail comments about the book section toRon Charles.

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