Review by Poledra -- Raquel Says (Something Entirely Une...

[Poledra]

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

---

1 out of 4 stars

---

Share This Review

---

Raquel Says (Something Entirely Unexpected) by Mois Benarroch is a stream-of-consciousness novella that contemplates the existence of another person that lives a parallel life to the author.

The first three chapters explain how the writer felt like he was alone and ready to die before he started speaking with Raquel, another writer, born in the same city but living in Madrid. The next eleven chapters give small insights into the life of Mois and how important moments of his childhood and his past shaped the person he is today. These chapters elaborate on how his existence has become entwined with Raquel's and how they are going to meet in person soon. The last chapter is from Raquel's perspective as she waits to meet Mois at last.

I did not enjoy this book. I liked the premise and there were a few lines of text that I felt were particularly striking, "So they have us numbered, so many Jews each year, and that year there was one extra," and "On the day we die we have no age, we are neither old nor young, neither children nor adults," but for the majority of the book, the author rambled poetically without purpose. The synopsis suggested a story and instead delivered a long rambling reminiscence of an author slipping further into self-created delusions or attempting to explain dissociative identity disorder without actually naming it.

This book is meta, in that it is very aware that it is a book. The author spends several paragraphs talking about how books are only words and letters and people don't exist except within those words and letters.

There were also a few places that I think might have been errors on the part of the translator or whoever formatted the ebook. There were line breaks missing in almost every scene of dialogue and there was one sentence that I had to reread several times before deciding that it must have been a translation error because although the author liked metaphors and similes I don't think this was what the author intended. "I'm looking for vital writing that comes straight from the throat, like laughing or crying, like breathing or peeing." Perhaps it was the intention of the author to leave the readers scratching their heads or maybe this was a metaphor with such depth that I just didn't understand it.

I rate this book 1 out of 4 stars because reading it gave me a headache and left me wondering why I had chosen this book in the first place.

******
Raquel Says (Something Entirely Unexpected)
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon

Like Poledra's review? Post a comment saying so!