Review by Sparkletime -- The Stealer of Memories
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Sparkletime
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Review by Sparkletime -- The Stealer of Memories
[Following is a volunteer review of "The Stealer of Memories" by Mois Benarroch.]
2 out of 4 stars
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The Stealer of Memories by Mois Benarroch is a strange journey through the mind of a writer.
This book begins on a bike but also in a store. The narrator has stolen the memory of the shop assistant from when she was young and got into a bike accident. He sees the street and the car clearly and is overwhelmed by the memory. That’s the intriguing part of the book: most of the book takes place in memories, including the memories of others.
While the narrator sits in a cafe on different days writing and trying to write, he thinks of his own past and the past of women around him. The narrator mainly sees women as sexual objects. For this reason and the reason that he seemingly thinks himself better than other, he’s highly unlikable. Rather than turning me off from reading this book, my dislike of the writer helped keep me interested as I personally enjoy learning different perspectives.
The plot really takes off when Sinombre, a mysterious writer claiming to have been a Nazi that is passing for a Jew now, starts sending autobiographical content to the narrator. It creates a lot of links between the narrator’s imagination and his own past, including Raquel, who plays a large role in the second half of the book. In many ways, the characters in the book are all extensions of the narrator himself though. Even in the memory of a young girl, he is viewing the memory as himself rather than as a young girl would have viewed it.
I think the ending brings all the moving parts into a nice little package. This book has a lot of moving parts and ideas but it manages to not feel overwhelming or disconnected. The book is pondering the connections of human beings to each other and the memories they keep. I found myself doing a lot of thinking when I finished reading.
The Stealer of Memories is a stream of consciousness first person perspective book but the book was full of grammar errors. I think this might be due to the author not being fully fluent in English but it’s extremely distracting. I know part of it is stylistic but several times I had to reread the same page to figure out what was going on due to the combination of style and poor grammar. This book is hard to read and if the story hadn’t been interesting for me, I could not have finished the book at all. For this reason, I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars. I cannot rate this book higher because it was so difficult to read even though I love this type of book with deep introspection. If you're the type of reader that enjoys a more philosophical read and can stand to read it, you might want to risk it. Otherwise, maybe wait for a better edit before giving this a shot.
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The Stealer of Memories
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2 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
The Stealer of Memories by Mois Benarroch is a strange journey through the mind of a writer.
This book begins on a bike but also in a store. The narrator has stolen the memory of the shop assistant from when she was young and got into a bike accident. He sees the street and the car clearly and is overwhelmed by the memory. That’s the intriguing part of the book: most of the book takes place in memories, including the memories of others.
While the narrator sits in a cafe on different days writing and trying to write, he thinks of his own past and the past of women around him. The narrator mainly sees women as sexual objects. For this reason and the reason that he seemingly thinks himself better than other, he’s highly unlikable. Rather than turning me off from reading this book, my dislike of the writer helped keep me interested as I personally enjoy learning different perspectives.
The plot really takes off when Sinombre, a mysterious writer claiming to have been a Nazi that is passing for a Jew now, starts sending autobiographical content to the narrator. It creates a lot of links between the narrator’s imagination and his own past, including Raquel, who plays a large role in the second half of the book. In many ways, the characters in the book are all extensions of the narrator himself though. Even in the memory of a young girl, he is viewing the memory as himself rather than as a young girl would have viewed it.
I think the ending brings all the moving parts into a nice little package. This book has a lot of moving parts and ideas but it manages to not feel overwhelming or disconnected. The book is pondering the connections of human beings to each other and the memories they keep. I found myself doing a lot of thinking when I finished reading.
The Stealer of Memories is a stream of consciousness first person perspective book but the book was full of grammar errors. I think this might be due to the author not being fully fluent in English but it’s extremely distracting. I know part of it is stylistic but several times I had to reread the same page to figure out what was going on due to the combination of style and poor grammar. This book is hard to read and if the story hadn’t been interesting for me, I could not have finished the book at all. For this reason, I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars. I cannot rate this book higher because it was so difficult to read even though I love this type of book with deep introspection. If you're the type of reader that enjoys a more philosophical read and can stand to read it, you might want to risk it. Otherwise, maybe wait for a better edit before giving this a shot.
******
The Stealer of Memories
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes
Like Sparkletime's review? Post a comment saying so!
Latest Review: "The Protectors, The First Coming" by Jonathan Gregory Reed
