1 out of 4 stars
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The Stealer of Memories by Mois Benarroch had an interesting title and it was in the fantasy section, so I thought this would be an exciting book to read. Looking at it, I could see a company had translated it into English, so I got the book and was eager to start reading it.
The story is about a writer that steals the memories of people and these get merged with his own and we find ourselves asking, is what I remember real, or has someone influenced what I remember about a specific event in my past? This made me question my own memories, but I could not enjoy the book.
Unfortunately this book only gets a 1 out of 4 star rating. This rating is mainly due to the struggle I had with the book. Right from the offset it was clear that the translation had been done badly. This meant that the book was very difficult to follow with pages being re-read several times to try and understand what was happening.
There were 2 main problems with the book that made me almost stop reading, and these were the grammar and the flow of the story. So, let’s start with the grammar. This book needs to be translated either a native English speaker, or someone who is 100 % fluent in English. The sentences are structured wrong, with mixed tenses, words in the wrong order, sentences unfinished and no spaces between some words. There is also a strong lack of full stops. One page that I read contained no full stops, only commas. When reading it, it was clear that there should have been a handful of full stops in there, but the author (possibly translator) didn’t use any.
While this is a narrative and is told through the eyes of a writer, there is some dialogue in the story between several of the characters. This is another point that caused severe confusion. There was no structure to the conversation and no clear indication of who was speaking. Each time a different person spoke during a conversation, there would be a hyphen to show that someone else is speaking, with no indication of whom the person was and I was left guessing based on what they were saying.
It wasn’t until halfway through the book that I started to get an idea of what it was about. This is because of the fight you have with the book when trying to read it. The second problem is with the narration. As I mentioned before, it is told through the eyes of a writer and he is the main subject of the story. However, there are parts of the story when the subject changes and you are then it is someone else narrating the story.
When the narrator of the story changes, there is no clear transition and for a brief period, you are reading it as if told by the main character and you are left wondering what he is talking about and what is happening. The lack of transition between the subjects (narrators) coupled with the grammar problems, left me confused and I had to re-read sections to try and put the story together myself.
This would have been a good book if it were not for the problems mentioned above. The premise is good and at the point at which I started to understand what the story was about, I realised that it is thought provoking. However, I’m not sure if I got the entire point of the story, due to the confusion I had. My recommendation is to wait for a new translation that has been done to a high standard and then you should be able to appreciate the story.
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The Stealer of Memories
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