Review by Trishnar -- Raquel Says (Something Entirely Un...

[Trishnar]

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

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2 out of 4 stars

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Raquel Says (Something Unexpected)

‘Today and only today, you may create a person’.

What would you do if you came to your computer and found those words? I would think of it as baffling. These were the words that Mois Benarroch found typed on a document he was working on. He was meant to create a person living in a parallel universe, born in the same year and in the same city as the author. The person he created is Raquel. The book is Raquel Says (Something Unexpected).

It is puzzling. One asks themselves ‘Who is Raquel?’. How are their world’s intertwined in such a manner that is so captivating? Why does Raquel ask Mois to start writing in Spanish when he’s been writing in Hebrew all along? This led me to do some bit of research on the author seeing as I have never read any of his books. I found that he was born in Morocco but is of Spanish decent and is a Sepherdic Jew. His family migrated to Israel where he’s been residing and writing in his adoptive language. He does mention some of this information early on in the book.

I will be honest to say that this book wasn’t one I would have picked straight away from the bookshelf, however, I read it all the same. My first state was confusion, especially in the first chapter. Then I was intrigued. Mois engages the reader with a baroque web of thoughts and memories from his childhood and from Raquel’s. He takes you on a trip through his life experiences and his engagement with Raquel.
Mystery. I love mystery in a book, and this book was not short of it. For instance, he recreates a version of himself in a woman who lives in a different country and writes like him. This resonates with me as a form of escapism, where he gets to be a completely different person yet, still connected to himself.

‘They will think the waves know how to write.’ ‘I learned the best poems from the waves.’ I found this poetic and romantic in a way. Raquel tells him that he should learn more technique and go back twenty years so that they can be married and have 3 kids. The sort of romance I experienced in Something unexpected was, quite literally, something unexpected. It bore more depth. A sapiosexual kind of romance.
There are some things I did not like about the book. The plot was not fluid enough for me. It felt like random thoughts that pop out of someone’s head from time to time. I also experienced some disconnection between locations and characters. It did not draw me in, and for that I give it a rating of 2 out of 4.

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Raquel Says (Something Entirely Unexpected)
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