PositiveThe AtlanticDescribing Untrue is tricky, so I’ll let Martin’s introduction provide a window into her well-executed goal: \'Untrue,\' she writes, \'is a book with a point of view—namely that whatever else we may think of them, women who reject monogamy are brave, and their experiences and possible motivations are instructive.\' Part manifesto, part cultural anthropology, part literary criticism, part memoir, Untrue veers in a number of directions in pursuit of proving Martin’s thesis, but never abruptly or in an order that feels jarring. Interviewing both experts in the field and ordinary women living outside the alleged norms of monogamy, Martin takes her readers on a winding path from divorce to adultery, from Darwin to fruit flies, from the sexism that came about after the invention of the plough to the sexual liberation of the Himba, a Namibian tribe in which, according to one sample cited by Martin, nearly 32 percent of mothers give birth to babies fathered through extramarital affairs ... The sui generis quality of Untrue is the author’s forte.
