Review by Unionjack2281 -- Raquel Says (Something Entire...

[Unionjack2281]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Raquel Says (Something Entirely Unexpected)" by Mois benarroch.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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I give the book, Raquel Says (Something Entirely Unexpected) by Mois Bennarroch and translated by Sally Seward, 2 out of 4 stars. I believe this book is supposed to be fiction, but it could easily float into nonfiction as it portrays the author’s creation of a character and a book.

The story centers around Mois and his inability to write or create after having received multiple bad reviews until he comes up with a character that his age, from his city, and is essentially his soulmate who he has never met.

The book was well written, I will admit that. It had the flow of Faulkner with it jumping around points of view. However, it brought back flashbacks of Walden from my high school days and I really hated that book. Generally, it was confusing, and I desperately wanted a “show not tell” scenario, but all of it was tell not show. Bennarroch told his entire thought process and jumped between ramblings without connecting them. His character came off as self-absorbed and that led to all of the problems in his life and to his creating a type of “perfect woman” in a parallel universe. To me, Raquel seems to repeat everything that Mois wants in order to inflate his ego and therefore seems completely unrealistic to me (I know she’s fictional, but there needs to be a bit of depth there).

To add to this, the entire book felt like everything that Bennarroch had ever wanted to complain about, but was afraid to do so, so he decided to put it all into one book where he was complaining to Raquel about everything. Raquel of course explains to him that his thoughts are valid, which is meant to help him get through his issues in real life.

I will say that the book was thoroughly creative. Bennarroch created different versions of himself that could write in different languages and therefore were different parallels to himself and to Raquel. But as I stated before the “tell not show” scenarios kept this book from a lot of the potential it had. I think that potential was the sole reason I finished reading this book. I kept hoping that it would evolve into something that would be memorable to me, but unfortunately it did not.

Overall, I did not really enjoy the book. It was rambling, confusing, and did not fulfill the potential that I felt it had. Yet, I feel happy for Bennarroch for having written everything, as it felt like it had been very cathartic to him.

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Raquel Says (Something Entirely Unexpected)
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