Review by AmeliaLovesBooks -- The Nobel Prize
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AmeliaLovesBooks
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Review by AmeliaLovesBooks -- The Nobel Prize
[Following is a volunteer review of "The Nobel Prize" by Mois benarroch.]
1 out of 4 stars
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The Nobel Prize by Mois Benarroch, a 62-page scifi/fantasy novel, follows the story of a failing author obsessed with another institutionalized writer. This writer, diagnosed with a schizoid personality disorder, becomes a different character of his own books every day. Written in first person, our narrator’s own mental state starts to become questionable through this obsession.
In the beginning, I was optimistic. The storyline is clear; you know what you’re getting into and where it is headed. The premise is intriguing and in turn, I was hopeful. Quickly though, the story tanks into a crescendo of nothing less than a weird, muddled mess. At first, the humor reminded me of a Woody Allen film-constant rambling, odd satire, and bizarre thoughts. Woody Allen can get away with it, this book cannot.
With enough grammatical errors to send an English teacher into cardiac arrest, I wondered how this even got to be an actual published book. Misplaced commas, unnecessary quotation marks, random capitalization, and no ease of readability-this left me confused and frustrated. I found myself rereading whole chapters to try and make some sense of what was happening, but to no avail. Continuity and fluidity of writing was lacking, if not completely inexistent. There is no discernable timeline, no links to events, and very little character development.
In addition, this book just made me straight-up uncomfortable. With shameless, sexist dialogue, I was hard-pressed to keep going. There is a disturbing, somewhat barbaric scene where the narrator has sex with an extra-terrestrial woman, which essentially culminates into rape. The only thing this scene did was take a poor book and make it completely unbearable. I cannot imagine what motivated the author to include this awful part. Moreover, the ending felt cheap and abrupt. That shouldn’t have been surprising to me considering how the story line was already going, but I felt short-changed nonetheless.
I rate this book 1 out of 4 stars. It’s one thing to say that I didn’t like the book, but this is honestly, the worst book I’ve ever read. I would not recommend to anyone to waste their time on it. I tried very hard to find something redeemable in this story, but I couldn’t find it in myself to justify such bad writing. Mois Benarroch is supposedly a good poet, and in future, I hope he sticks to poetry. Writing novels is not his forte, at least not right now.
******
The Nobel Prize
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1 out of 4 stars
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The Nobel Prize by Mois Benarroch, a 62-page scifi/fantasy novel, follows the story of a failing author obsessed with another institutionalized writer. This writer, diagnosed with a schizoid personality disorder, becomes a different character of his own books every day. Written in first person, our narrator’s own mental state starts to become questionable through this obsession.
In the beginning, I was optimistic. The storyline is clear; you know what you’re getting into and where it is headed. The premise is intriguing and in turn, I was hopeful. Quickly though, the story tanks into a crescendo of nothing less than a weird, muddled mess. At first, the humor reminded me of a Woody Allen film-constant rambling, odd satire, and bizarre thoughts. Woody Allen can get away with it, this book cannot.
With enough grammatical errors to send an English teacher into cardiac arrest, I wondered how this even got to be an actual published book. Misplaced commas, unnecessary quotation marks, random capitalization, and no ease of readability-this left me confused and frustrated. I found myself rereading whole chapters to try and make some sense of what was happening, but to no avail. Continuity and fluidity of writing was lacking, if not completely inexistent. There is no discernable timeline, no links to events, and very little character development.
In addition, this book just made me straight-up uncomfortable. With shameless, sexist dialogue, I was hard-pressed to keep going. There is a disturbing, somewhat barbaric scene where the narrator has sex with an extra-terrestrial woman, which essentially culminates into rape. The only thing this scene did was take a poor book and make it completely unbearable. I cannot imagine what motivated the author to include this awful part. Moreover, the ending felt cheap and abrupt. That shouldn’t have been surprising to me considering how the story line was already going, but I felt short-changed nonetheless.
I rate this book 1 out of 4 stars. It’s one thing to say that I didn’t like the book, but this is honestly, the worst book I’ve ever read. I would not recommend to anyone to waste their time on it. I tried very hard to find something redeemable in this story, but I couldn’t find it in myself to justify such bad writing. Mois Benarroch is supposedly a good poet, and in future, I hope he sticks to poetry. Writing novels is not his forte, at least not right now.
******
The Nobel Prize
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Like AmeliaLovesBooks's review? Post a comment saying so!
Latest Review: "Lemoncella Cocktail" by Rene Natan
