Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Review by Ashley Crane -- "Raquel Says (Something Entirely Unexpected)" by Mois benarroch

Review by Ashley Crane -- "Raquel Says (Something Entirely Unexpected)" by Mois benarroch



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Review by Ashley Crane

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Raquel Says (Something Entirely Unexpected) by Mois Benarroch is classified as other fiction, but I would call it a fantastical memoir. The writer is the main character and the events of his life are incorporated throughout the book. However, the rest runs wild in an imaginative, metaphysical, and meditative steam of consciousness.

Mois, a Moroccan-born Jew, reluctantly moves to Israel with his parents at age 12. He grows up to become a poet and novelist who battles with struggles of self and the absence of true love. He feels that emigrating changed him so much that he sees himself at different ages with different versions of his name and almost completely separate identities. He creates a woman, Raquel, to love in his own image. He is very specific in pointing out that she is not a character, but an actual person. It is this mindset that changes the past and makes her retroactively real. Amidst the free-form observations about his background and style of writing, lies the core of a serendipitous and lyrical love story.

The themes of the novel are the existence of multiple dimensions of time and fate and the journey of multicultural self-discovery. As Raquel becomes more and more real, he can see the future of his past and how she has always been there in a parallel universe. He uses the pages to create a time and space where the two dimensions can finally find each other. He also continuously comes back to discussing the challenges of never being able to comfortably grow up as Mois, the Spanish-speaking Sephardic Jew from Morocco. He feels pressured to be Moshe in Israel and is affected by the weight of prejudice against his people and the fundamental differences he encounters within the Judaic religion.

The book doesn't make sense, but it does, which is essentially how Benarroch writes throughout the novel. I have a lot of respect for how he stays true to himself while knowing that his ideas are arguably far-fetched. It is all quite odd, but beautifully so. It is not the kind of book that I can see anyone having trouble putting down, anxious to find out what happens next, because as Benarroch says, "It's words, thoughts, but not a story." He says he's looking for something "further from literature... writing straight from the throat." He seeks to write "something that doesn't imitate life...writing that is life itself." In that regard, he nailed it. It is the most unique work that I have ever read. Even though I have great respect for the creation of something different, that was the thing I liked least about it. I need a book that I can't put down because I feel like I am living in the story.

I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars because I enjoyed the originality of ideas, raw honesty, and most of all, the poetic beauty. I did not rate it a 4 due to its limited ability to keep the reader engaged and the fact that the audience for such quantum ideas is somewhat narrow. I am quite versed in this area and still had to reread sections several times in order to figure out what he was trying to say. This is his realm though and it is a lovely one if you can let yourself in. In order to do so, you almost have to relax your mind as you do with your eyes to be able to see the image in a Magic Eye. "We live where only mystics can enter," he writes.

As I continue to reflect, my mind goes deeper still into his world of parallel paths, the fight for forfeited identities, literature in limbo, and logophilic loves. I would recommend it to the wonderfully weird, the misfits, the hopeless romantics, and those who, like Benarroch, feel lost without written word in their lives.

"And why are you leaving now?"
"It's because I ran out of words. Without words, I disappear."

******
Raquel Says (Something Entirely Unexpected) 






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