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

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

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Have you ever wondered what your life would have been like if you had made different choices? ‘Can a path fork to the point where it creates two completely different people?’ This is one of the themes dealt with in the captivating and unusual book, Raquel Says (Something Entirely Unexpected) by Mois Benarroch, where the fine line between reality and fantasy is constantly blurred. 

In this book, the author wrestles with the integral bliss and frustration of being a writer where he ‘created [Raquel] from [his] foolish rib, from the rib of a frustrated writer’. The element of creation is a central theme in this book where a writer is compared to Elohim, the Creative Force of the world. 

With words God created the earth and with words a writer creates a world that lives on the pages of his book. Within those pages the writer can create and destroy, bring together and separate. ‘Elohim is the creative force of the infinite, and we will be that creative force one day when we know how to join one letter to another, one word to another.’ 

The brilliance of this poetic literary work is that the reader is left guessing right to the end whether the author is writing about a tangible person or a figment of his imagination. 

The chapters became very lengthy towards the second half of the book compared to the first ten chapters. The last chapter seemed almost out of place since it was written from the perspective of a different character. It was a sudden and almost grating change but bearing in mind the theme of two lives running parallel, two people experiencing life very similarly, the idea of living analogous lives was well supported.

Although it was thought-provoking reading material, I found it void of any definite structure. In the seventh chapter, it is noticeable that the grammatical rules of written dialogue was not followed which obstructed the flow of the chapter. This, however, might be charming to some readers as the author stated, ‘… literature and technique, it’s something you have to learn to hate after learning it, like learning to paint. Once you know how to use all the techniques, the real hard work is finding your own voice. What I’m looking for is really something further from what we call literature, but it’s not antiliterature either, because it would end up being the same thing’. 

I rate this book three out of four stars. Raquel Says (Something Entirely Unexpected) offers the reader an intimate glimpse into the solitary and searching soul of a writer which I find both enthralling and enlightening. Loneliness finds a friend in a life that runs parallel to its own.

I would recommend this book to readers who are fascinated by the notion of living outside the boundaries of space and time where the past, present and future are relative concepts and people living parallel lives can come together in a moment outside time.

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Raquel Says (Something Entirely Unexpected) 

Read Raquel Says in

English https://www.amazon.com/dp/1507117973

Italiano https://www.amazon.it/dp/1507123744

Español https://www.amazon.es/dp/1519020198

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