Review by Corvac -- The Nobel Prize by Mois benarroch

[Corvac]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Nobel Prize" by Mois benarroch.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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The Nobel Prize is a novella by Mois Benarroch.

A struggling writer discovers that an old acquaintance has been committed in a mental ward. This acquaintance (Jorge) mentally becomes a character from one of his books every day. He fully believes that he is this character, and then the next day he is somebody different. Despite this, he still manages to be a successful writer. Our hero hopes to use this in one of his own novels.

The story meanders through increasingly bizarre sets of events, including encounters with a self-admitted alien who seduces him.

This is an odd little story, and very interesting despite a large number of technical flaws. The story is strange yet engaging, with multiple levels of a story-telling happening.

With this being said, the technical flaws are numerous and very jarring. There are a large number of very blatant editing mistakes. The story is littered with full stops and commas are littered through the text seemingly at random, as well as the wrong words appearing in places (in other words, a spell-check corrected a spelling mistake but changed it into the incorrect word). The language used throughout the book is cumbersome to read, with run-on sentences filling pages with useless description. I read this very short little story over a long stretch, and every time I came back to it, I needed to struggle through the clunky use of language. Apparently the novel is not directly translated, however it does still read very much like a translation.

It is not only on language and on grammar that the book suffers. The storyline makes strange jumps, which do not flow easily from scene to scene. This may have been intentional, in order to create a sense of the madness that the leading character finds himself. Coupled with all the other mistakes, all it does is make the story even more difficult to read.

I struggled to get through this book and I am not usually put off with technical issues. The piece feels like it needed a serious amount of cleanup, which is a shame, as there is a lot of potential in it.

I will give this a disappointing 2 out of 4 stars, with a lot of polish this could be entertaining to read, but as it stands it is a chore. Between the poor editing and the sloppy writing I was tempted to give this a one star, but the interesting premise nudged it up to a second star, if only barely.

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The Nobel Prize
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