1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Robbins Is The Master, November 16, 2010
This is yet another of the prolific Harold Robbins splashy sagas. If you have not enjoyed a book in years, this is for you. Robbins proves yet again why he was the best selling fiction author of the 20th century. The characters expertly written as only Robbins can and with a storyline to match. Quite simply Robbins work is candy for the mind and this is a pretty sweet piece.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
A fine book for Robbins fans, June 17, 2011
Published in 1985, The Storyteller would be Harold Robbins' last novel for 6 years. The 1980's was not an easy time for the veteran author. Shortly after Spellbinder was published in 1982, Robbins suffered a stroke. The incident would impact him in the worst way possible for a writer: words that were articulated in his brain would come out a jumbled mess on the typewritten page. Robbins hired a new personal assistant, Jann Stamp, who helped him through this period and eventually he regained much of his ability to accurately transcribe in writing his thoughts and word choices. In the process, Robbins and Stamp grew close and she became invaluable in writing his later novels.
The Storyteller is the story of Joe Crown, an ambitious boy from East New York, Brooklyn whose goal in life is to become a rich, successful commercial author. The Storyteller is divided into 3 parts--Part I is set in the early 1940's in Brooklyn, where Joe lives with his father, mother and cousin and works a variety of odd jobs, including being a drug deliverer, while writing spicy adventure short stories for the pulps all the while trying to gain a literary agent who will give him entrée to sell his more respectable story ideas to the magazine market. Part II is set in Hollywood in the immediate years following WWII where Joe is now married to his cousin and making a living as a screenwriter for tacky B movies. The demands of his Hollywood career and his messy sexual life make it very difficult for Joe to concentrate on writing his novel. Part III is set in the la dolce vita demi-monde of late 1940's Europe as Joe, now divorced, works for a shady European film producer, all the while trying to make enough money to have time set aside to write a commercial novel. With the help of his beautiful agent, who has kept her distance from Joe, he finally achieves his dream and wins his agent's love in the process as she finally admits that she can't help but be lured into the pleasures that Joe's world has to offer. The novel is framed at the beginning and the end with brief sections set in 1985, in the first, Joe is recovering in the hospital from a serious car accident on the LA's 405 freeway, and at the end, Joe and his wife attend a splashy party to celebration of yet another wild best seller.
In The Storyteller, Robbins touches upon the settings and themes of some of his most memorable novels, with Part I returning us to the world of Never Love a Stranger and A Stone for Danny Fisher, Part II to the glitzy show business setting of The Carpetbaggers and The Inheritors, and Part III revisiting the Eurotrash jet set milieu of The Adventurers. The book is entertaining, and though Robbins may have had been having his struggles with illness, his libido certainly wasn't in decline as the sex scenes in The Storyteller rank among his raunchiest. At the time the book was published, there was a new regime at Simon & Schuster which was pushing its best selling authors to publish more often to bring in the revenue. As a result, The Storyteller feels like a rush job. I wish more time had been provided to allow Robbins to go into more detail with all three parts of the book. As with many of other Robbins' books, the story ends with several sentimental scenes, but the effect falls flat, especially with the scene between Joe and his parents as his parents are absent from the book for all of Part II and most of Part III. The hastiness of the book's publication can also be seen by a lack of good fact checking, that places Sophia Loren and her husband Carlo Ponti on the Via Veneto in the late 40s long before Loren became a star. And in the final pages of the book, which starts out written in the first person, the narration switches between 1st person and 3rd person from sentence. More time really should have been invested in copy editing rather than getting the book to the stores.
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3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Terrible book, October 14, 2003
By A Customer
I guess if you're a fan of Robbins, you might enjoy this. But the whole thing is full of boring, cheesy sex scenes, idiotic prose, and half-connected plot lines. None of the characters are interesting or believable, and you won't care what happens to any of them. In my opinion Robbins' style leaves a LOT to be desired. I do not recommend this book and plan to steer clear of Robbins' work in the future. Don't waste your money.
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