Book Review: ‘As Time Goes By: A Novel of Casablanca’

As Time Goes By: A Novel of Casablanca

Author: Michael Walsh

Publisher: Warner Books (Hachette Books), October 1, 1998

As Time Goes By: A Novel of Casablanca was ex-Time magazine music critic Michael Walsh’s second novel, and it serves as both a prequel and sequel to one of the most popular movies of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Unlike Scarlett, Alexandra Ripley’s sequel to Margaret Mitchell`s Gone With the Wind, As Time Goes By was neither widely praised nor reviled, perhaps because there was not as much media scrutiny for Walsh’s exploration of the lives of Ilsa, Rick, Victor Laszlo, Louis Renault, Sam, and all “the usual suspects” after the fade-to-black in Casablanca.

Walsh was no fool when he undertook this project. Indeed, in his afterword, he says. “Everyone knows Casablanca. Everyone loves Casablanca. Therein lies both the challenge and the danger of writing a novel of Casablanca.“

Walsh’s approach is to treat the movie as a centerpiece sandwiched between the two timelines depicted in the 38 chapters of his novel. His prose is crisp and fast-moving, echoing the tone of the Epstein Twins’ screenplay while expanding the story both backward to Rick Blaine’s past in New York’s seedy underworld an forward to a perilous mission in Victor Laszlo’s Nazi-occupied homeland, Czechoslovakia in 1942.

Purists — and I know there are always going to be Casablanca fans who feel this way — will probably say the movie was fine without a sequel (forgetting or ignoring the two failed TV series based on Casablanca), but this book is a pleasure to read.

Particularly worth noting is how Walsh blends Casablanca‘s fictional characters and historical reality. At the heart of As Time Goes By is Victor Laszlo’s involvement in Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi “Protector of Moravia and Bohemia” and architect of Hitler’s “final solution.” Although the inclusion of the Casablanca cast is fiction, the details of the operation and its tragic aftermath are historically accurate.

Another bonus is Walsh’s literary talent. His narrative captures the pace of its source perfectly, and his ear for the characters’ voices is almost uncanny. Readers who allow themselves to fall under this novel’s spell will hear the voices of Claude Rains, Paul Heinreid, Ingrid Bergman, and especially Humphrey Bogart in the exchanges between characters.

There are also many “inside gags” for knowing Casablanca fans within the pages of this wonderful novel, such as the inclusion of “As Time Goes By” composer Herman Hupfeld, into the storyline. Like the movie it plays homage to, As Time Goes By is romantic, witty, and dramatic.