Amazon.com.au:Customer reviews: The Storyteller of Casablanca

Top positive review

Magnificently Moorish

Reviewed in Australia on 10 March 2022

This book was an absolute delight to read. It had intrigue and splendour and mystery all rolled and woven into each page. I loved it so very much I just wanted to keep on reading ❤️
I would recommend this book to lovers of books that you can’t put down because the story and beautiful descriptive characters draw you in incredibly, wholly and in an intoxicating way.

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Caroline NZ

Skipped a lot of pages

Reviewed in Australia on 30 September 2021

I just cannot recommend this book. I skipped a lot of pages of the “diary chapters” without losing track of the story thread, which says a lot about the unnecessary boring drivel.
Its only the last quarter of the book that has any depth to it so in my opinion, not worth bothering with. A big let down after the earlier books.

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Caroline NZ

Skipped a lot of pages

Reviewed in Australia on 30 September 2021

Verified Purchase

I just cannot recommend this book. I skipped a lot of pages of the “diary chapters” without losing track of the story thread, which says a lot about the unnecessary boring drivel.
Its only the last quarter of the book that has any depth to it so in my opinion, not worth bothering with. A big let down after the earlier books.

2 people found this helpful

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The Cookster

A pleasant enough read - but also quite frustrating.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 September 2021

Verified Purchase

Rating: 2.3/5

This is my second experience of Fiona Valpy's work, having previously read "The Dressmaker's Gift". Overall, I think "The Storyteller of Casablanca" is a slightly better novel, but many of the frustrations that I felt while reading "The Dressmaker's Gift" were again evident in this book.

The story takes place across two timelines: Initially 2010 and then interspersed with flashbacks to 1941/42 via the medium of a young girl's diary. The narrative for the 2010 sections is provided by Zoe, an expat who has relocated to Casablanca with her husband. Hidden away in one of the bedrooms of her new home Zoe finds a diary written by Josie, a 12-year-old (initially) girl who lived in the same property with her family some 70 years earlier. As she reads through the diary Zoe is transported back to world that young Josie inhabited and the challenges that she faced.

Fiona Valpy does a creditable job of evoking the atmosphere of life in Morocco, both in the modern setting, but more especially in the wartime period. Josie's story is one that I found engaging. I was not always convinced that the voice given to her by the author was entirely authentic for a girl of her age, but I was prepared to overlook this on the grounds of artistic licence. I was less enthralled by Zoe's chapters. For the most part - certainly until much later in the novel - these contributed little to the overall development and detracted from the more compelling story of Josie, in a way that disrupted the emotional investment that was being made in the characters from that earlier time. Consequently, there are some potentially heartrending moments that don't achieve the level of impact they should have done. I made a similar observation in my review of "The Dressmaker's Gift". In that book I was also frustrated by the handling of the modern sections of the dual timeframe story and the diminishing effect they had on the impact of the novel as a whole. It is disappointing that the same trait is again evident in the author's work here.

On the whole, this is far from being a bad book, and it is a pleasant enough way to while away a few hours, but I felt it had the potential to be something much better.

33 people found this helpful

raymond knox

This book should come with a warning of trauma and great distress in the final chapters.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 October 2021

Verified Purchase

Having read a lot of this author’s previous books I was shocked and distressed by the extreme sadness and the traumatic ending of the story. In my view totally unnecessary and shocking especially in the light that it was written during the pandemic and a lot of people are finding escape and solace in books.

2 people found this helpful

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