NYLONbooks

Rhyming Life And Death

Rhyming Life And Death (Translated by Nicholas de Lange), May 2009, 6/10.

Written by Amoz Oz. Published by Chatto and Windus.

This wildly imaginative novella pushed the boundaries of modern fiction a little too far for my taste. Although it was mostly an actual story there were substantial parts where the reader was spoken to directly and outside the narrative, and Oz took these opportunities to explicitly question (often without answering) why he was directing the story as he did and to make random changes to the plotline without reasons just because, as the author, he could.  Although this is a novel way to narrate, it meant that despite there being a lot of character development there was no real plotline, few bridges between sections and little story development.