Review by dhwanis -- The Nobel Prize by Mois benarroch
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Review by dhwanis -- The Nobel Prize by Mois benarroch

1 out of 4 stars
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The premise of The Nobel Prize was quite interesting, but unfortunately, it does not live up to those expectations. The book starts on an interesting note, we are introduced to a writer, who is also the narrator, and he finds out that a fellow writer is now in a mental institute. He visits the hospital and comes to know that his friend takes on the roles of the characters that he had written in his various books. Which interests our narrator and he sets out to track down all the books his friend had written in his career and understand the characters that he had written.
Once this has been set, the narration quickly dwindles. Since this book is written from a first person narrative, sometimes it feels that certain aspects were added just for the sake of it, as they were not really adding up to the main plot line. The inclusion of random sexist statements could also have been avoided. Overall, the start is quite exciting, but when you reach the end, you are left wondering what is really the point of this story?
The overall narration also lacks at places, and the narrator does not go into details as to why he feels a certain way about his wife, or what is their relationship dynamic. Same transcends to his relation with fellow authors. So, it becomes quite confusing as to why certain characters behaved the way they did or why the narrator was expressing certain thoughts.
The writing style is good, we find an undercurrent of satire, wherein the narrator is commenting on the state of many authors who struggle to make ends meet. At the same time, the book did not make use of quotation marks, which made it difficult to differentiate between speech and narration. Random commas and capitalization also hampered the overall reading quality.
Coming to the characterization, none of the characters were developed properly. Since the story starts abruptly and we have only the protagonist's viewpoint of everyone, which results in all characters having one-dimensional personalities and are easily forgettable. We also do not know much about the protagonist himself, except the fact that he is a writer and lives off his wife's income.
While this was quite a short book, I felt that it could have been treated in a much better manner. Had the author managed to stick to the premise and delivered, the story would have had a lot of potential. On the whole, I rate this book 1 out of 4
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The Nobel Prize
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