Review by Tooke17 -- Gates to Tangier by Mois Benarroch
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Jason Tooke
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Review by Tooke17 -- Gates to Tangier by Mois Benarroch
[Following is a volunteer review of "Gates to Tangier" by Mois Benarroch.]
1 out of 4 stars
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I rate this book 1 out of 4 stars.
Gates to Tangier, written by Mois Benarroch, begins with a family, seated in a lawyer’s office reading the will of the recently deceased father, in which, they discover that he had fathered an illegitimate child. The will stated that to release the inheritance the family must find this child, and so began a family’s journey back to the land they had left long ago. At this point in the story I was hooked, I was sure that this would be a very interesting and heart-warming story of a family homecoming and a reunification of siblings who had been separated in life from each other, as well as from their newly discovered half-brother. I was however disappointed.
As the story progressed the rotating narrative made it very difficult to follow the character development, and the characters all seemed to have the same personality, very flat and hard for me to relate to. The book was heavily peppered with religious references that I didn’t understand so I had to spend a lot of time on google researching Jewish subcultures and history on the Iberian Peninsula. I found this information very interesting, however it made the story hard to follow.
In this book, there were some things that I enjoyed, like what seemed to be the ghost of a brother who had passed away in a war, wandering the airport in Spain, it would have been nice if that part had gone somewhere but unfortunately, like many of the storylines in this book it did not, it went nowhere.
I began to like the character of Alberto, the brother who was obsessed with writing, he seemed to me to be interesting, and I would have liked to see his character develop, and learn more of his back story. This character, I felt, could have made the story more stimulating. Like Alberto, all the characters were left unexplored, and underdeveloped leaving them uninteresting, and indistinguishable from one another.
Some of the storylines in this book were great ideas, and I feel like the characters involved could have been much more interesting, I’m sure that their lives and backstories must have been more interesting and thought-provoking. In my opinion this book had many elements that, if expanded by the author would have led to a great novel.
In closing I wouldn’t recommend this book for someone who isn’t familiar with the history and culture of Moroccan Jews. This book saddened me a bit, in that the story itself had such great potential that was lost in a writing style, and that made it a very hard book to keep reading.
******
Gates to Tangier
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1 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
I rate this book 1 out of 4 stars.
Gates to Tangier, written by Mois Benarroch, begins with a family, seated in a lawyer’s office reading the will of the recently deceased father, in which, they discover that he had fathered an illegitimate child. The will stated that to release the inheritance the family must find this child, and so began a family’s journey back to the land they had left long ago. At this point in the story I was hooked, I was sure that this would be a very interesting and heart-warming story of a family homecoming and a reunification of siblings who had been separated in life from each other, as well as from their newly discovered half-brother. I was however disappointed.
As the story progressed the rotating narrative made it very difficult to follow the character development, and the characters all seemed to have the same personality, very flat and hard for me to relate to. The book was heavily peppered with religious references that I didn’t understand so I had to spend a lot of time on google researching Jewish subcultures and history on the Iberian Peninsula. I found this information very interesting, however it made the story hard to follow.
In this book, there were some things that I enjoyed, like what seemed to be the ghost of a brother who had passed away in a war, wandering the airport in Spain, it would have been nice if that part had gone somewhere but unfortunately, like many of the storylines in this book it did not, it went nowhere.
I began to like the character of Alberto, the brother who was obsessed with writing, he seemed to me to be interesting, and I would have liked to see his character develop, and learn more of his back story. This character, I felt, could have made the story more stimulating. Like Alberto, all the characters were left unexplored, and underdeveloped leaving them uninteresting, and indistinguishable from one another.
Some of the storylines in this book were great ideas, and I feel like the characters involved could have been much more interesting, I’m sure that their lives and backstories must have been more interesting and thought-provoking. In my opinion this book had many elements that, if expanded by the author would have led to a great novel.
In closing I wouldn’t recommend this book for someone who isn’t familiar with the history and culture of Moroccan Jews. This book saddened me a bit, in that the story itself had such great potential that was lost in a writing style, and that made it a very hard book to keep reading.
******
Gates to Tangier
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes
Like Tooke17's review? Post a comment saying so!
Latest Review: The Hand Bringer by Christopher J. Penington
