Re: Official Review: The Expelled

[Chrys Brobbey]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Expelled" by Mois Benarroch.]

The Expelled was written in Spanish by Mois Benarroch, and translated into English by Pamela Daccache in 2015. Published and distributed by Babelcube, it is indicated as one of seven novels in the volume titled ‘Love and Exile.’ Mois Benarroch is a Moroccan Jew who lives in Israel.
The book can be divided into four sections: the introduction, the bus trip, the expelled, and the conclusion.

In the introduction, the author is on a bus ride home from Tel Aviv one night when he sees a passenger who looks like a younger replica of his wife. He watches her in amazement up to the point of disembarking. She exits through the front door, and he through the back. By chance, he enters a bookshop close by and finds her at the magazines section. He tells her that he knows her from thirty years back. She replies that she is only twenty-five years old, and censures him: “You’re one of those maniacs stalking people, and then you come and try to be funny….” He counters that he knew her five years before her birth, and that he sees her name, Gabriele, written on her forehead. (His wife is called Gabrielle). She is intrigued that he is some psychic, and invites him to go home with her, to tell her more about herself. Spoiler alert! I cannot reveal a lot more, except to say that they parted on the promise that he reads one of his novels to her on their next rendezvous.

The novel that he reads to her is about the bus. It goes from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, traveling through five countries. On this particular trip, there are sixty passengers on board. They do not see eye to eye, so they decide to separate into two; the front people and the back people. It turns out to be a journey to nowhere, but one beset with calamities. A back passenger, by name Cash, is shot and dies on the bus. Another passenger, by name Tuval, holds the smoking gun, but he denies pressing the trigger; and that the gun flew into his palm after it was fired. So who killed Cash, and what do they do with his body? The metaphor of the ‘bus’ is Israel, with “a whole mix of Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews.” The front people “are good people,” whereas “the back people are jerks and they’re bad...for being just back people...”

The author explains ‘the expelled’ as the name given to the Sephardic Jews who arrived in Morocco after the Inquisition. He was born in Morocco to Sephardic parents, who migrated with him to Israel when he was twelve years old. To be Israeli, it was instilled in him to stop talking about Morocco. As a good immigrant, he accepted to comply until age thirty, when he changed his awareness of things. Since then his experience has been that of “facing a new inquisition, the worst that I could imagine.” I find the material in this part a repetition of the content of the author’s other book, ‘Raquel Says’, that I reviewed earlier.

With the book’s assigned genre of science fiction/fantasy, I expected it to have a magical, supernormal and unique plot, but that is not the case. The stories fail on the test of tension, action and excitement. The author uses first person voice, in the form of monologue, which makes the reading not exciting. Even where other characters are involved, the conversation is tedious. It is not spiced with the narrative flow that makes reading prose pleasurable. The writing is full of long sentences, some of which do not follow strict grammatical rules. For instance, the whole of page 12 is taken up by only five sentences. And there are a lot of words mixed up, without spacing. Examples are: ”andcontinuing” page 14; “sayingit’s” page 16; “namethat” page 78; “discussionsin” page 79, and “thenineties” page 80.

Some immigrants may identify with the book, as well as Jews and others interested in Israeli issues. I will caution against teenagers reading the book, on account of two scenes with graphic sexual depictions, and the use of some indecent words. The book rates above one star, but below three stars on account of the flaws noted earlier. I rate it 2 out of 4 stars.

[Amagine]

Wow, it sounds like an intriguing book. It's too bad that it has a lot of flaws or could have had a higher rating.

Great Review! ?

[kandscreeley]

I sometimes wonder why authors place a book in the genre they do. Sometimes just simply putting it into a different genre would give a higher star rating or perhaps just a better audience. Interesting review. Thanks.

[Heidi M Simone]

Thank you for the detailed and honest review. I'm not sure if this is for me. I read a translated book a little while back, and found that the translation lacked a lot of what the original version had (according to those who read it the original language). Maybe this is what happened here? If it is, that's too bad.

[michelonline29]

Not the kind of book I am fond of, but this book looks like interesting. It could have been rated higher if there's no so much error in it. Congrats on a well-written review!