Review by va2016 -- The Stealer of Memories
Posted: 09 Mar 2017, 04:46
[Following is a volunteer review of "The Stealer of Memories" by Mois Benarroch.]
1 out of 4 stars
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This is a review of the book The Stealer of Memories by Mois Benarroch. The book has been translated by William C. This is a fiction novel.
Mois, the protagonist of the story regularly visits local cafes in Jerusalem, Israel to ponder over plots for his stories. He starts getting visions about some events. He wonders if they are memories from his other births. He realizes that those are incidents that happened in the lives of the people that he encounters. Meanwhile, he gets an anonymous request to write about someone's experiences of their holocaust days. The reader is motivated to explore how Mois manages all these occurrences and whether he finds peace with himself.
There are a few things that this reviewer likes about this book. The author meanders through his thoughts on life, consciousness, memory, etc. There is an interesting narration of an experience about dying and being born again in another body. There are sections that reflect on the Holocaust times - children mysteriously disappearing from the schools, discrimination based on culture and religion, women being used as sex slaves and for prostitution, etc. The author opines about the other authors and writing in general. There are mentions about the importance of a book, how to write a novel, how in the current times an author is given more importance than their work, etc.
After reading the first few pages of the book, it becomes obvious to the reader that the book has been machine-translated. There are awkward and incomprehensible passages throughout the book. The final section called ‘The Dialogue’ looks so bad because of machine-translation of a poem.
The formatting is pretty bad with several empty pages with no explanation or note. There are several grammar errors (for example, "I was fainted"), words with missing spaces between them, missing quotation marks, spelling mistakes and wrong word usages (using 'I' instead of 'He' or 'She'). It is impossible to comment on the writing style because it is not clear if the bad writing style is because of the poor translation or if it is the writing style of the author.
Overall, what may have been a wonderful work in the native language has turned out to be so bad because of the machine translation to English. This reviewer made sincere and repeated attempts to make sense of the story flow but was only partially successful. Although there are some good points, because of the incomprehensible story flow it becomes almost impossible to even complete reading this book. This reviewer would not recommend this book to anyone because it would be a waste of readers’ time and money. I could have given a 2 out of 4 stars rating for this book based on the positive points but because of the bad translation, bad formatting and several mechanical errors I give this book a 1 out of 4 stars.
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The Stealer of Memories
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Like va2016's review? Post a comment saying so!
1 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
This is a review of the book The Stealer of Memories by Mois Benarroch. The book has been translated by William C. This is a fiction novel.
Mois, the protagonist of the story regularly visits local cafes in Jerusalem, Israel to ponder over plots for his stories. He starts getting visions about some events. He wonders if they are memories from his other births. He realizes that those are incidents that happened in the lives of the people that he encounters. Meanwhile, he gets an anonymous request to write about someone's experiences of their holocaust days. The reader is motivated to explore how Mois manages all these occurrences and whether he finds peace with himself.
There are a few things that this reviewer likes about this book. The author meanders through his thoughts on life, consciousness, memory, etc. There is an interesting narration of an experience about dying and being born again in another body. There are sections that reflect on the Holocaust times - children mysteriously disappearing from the schools, discrimination based on culture and religion, women being used as sex slaves and for prostitution, etc. The author opines about the other authors and writing in general. There are mentions about the importance of a book, how to write a novel, how in the current times an author is given more importance than their work, etc.
After reading the first few pages of the book, it becomes obvious to the reader that the book has been machine-translated. There are awkward and incomprehensible passages throughout the book. The final section called ‘The Dialogue’ looks so bad because of machine-translation of a poem.
The formatting is pretty bad with several empty pages with no explanation or note. There are several grammar errors (for example, "I was fainted"), words with missing spaces between them, missing quotation marks, spelling mistakes and wrong word usages (using 'I' instead of 'He' or 'She'). It is impossible to comment on the writing style because it is not clear if the bad writing style is because of the poor translation or if it is the writing style of the author.
Overall, what may have been a wonderful work in the native language has turned out to be so bad because of the machine translation to English. This reviewer made sincere and repeated attempts to make sense of the story flow but was only partially successful. Although there are some good points, because of the incomprehensible story flow it becomes almost impossible to even complete reading this book. This reviewer would not recommend this book to anyone because it would be a waste of readers’ time and money. I could have given a 2 out of 4 stars rating for this book based on the positive points but because of the bad translation, bad formatting and several mechanical errors I give this book a 1 out of 4 stars.
******
The Stealer of Memories
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes
Like va2016's review? Post a comment saying so!
. But, would like to try again!