Review: Oh, to be young and this naïve

Maturity brings wisdom and experience. But how refreshing it is to let whim and whimsy guide your actions – if only because you don’t know any better.

In Casablanca a girl of unusual beauty, born on the wrong side of the tracks, wants to escape. Stifled and trapped by her mother’s decisions but determined to get out of the life she was born into, Sarah sets her heart on Driss – as rich as the king but ugly, socially inept and apparently not even interested.

As Rich as the King: A Tale of Casablanca is a richly imagined, compelling, coming-of-age novel that delivers humour, sympathy and sorrow in bucketfuls. Sarah’s naïvety is charming – you just know she’s going to be severely disillusioned but you still have so much hope for her. Driss, the “Beast” of the story, is initially hard to read, and here and there you’ll want to kick him; but he gradually finds your heart too.

It’s a tale of class; they’re just two young people caught up in the rigid social stratification of Moroccan society. Author Abigail Assor and translator Natasha Lehrer bring that society to life.

The poor struggle every day from sunrise to sunset: selling or panhandling on pavements, eating from dodgy cafés.

The rich, mostly idle and cruel, lounge by the sea or near pools at the exclusive club or in rich homes, waited on hand and foot.

Sarah manages to find – inveigle – her way into a circle of rich young people, her naïvety blinding her to the many ways she can never fit in. Her desperate decision to secure her future with Driss only makes it more clear how out of her depth she truly is.

But our scrappy and lovable heroine is smart and knows what to do in the end – an end that leaves us free to imagine a happy ending for these two.