Books Love Me – Reviews

Questions like ‘How would you get rid of a murder weapon without causing suspicion?’ and ‘What if you found out the tattoo on your back was worth over a million pounds?’ on the back cover of Skin and Other Stories by Roald Dahl could make the reader hungry for more dark tales with unexpected endings.

This book has a collection of 11 short stories, each with its own eccentricity and uniqueness. I particularly enjoyed reading some of them like Skin, Lamb to the Slaughter, Galloping Foxley and My Lady Love, My Dove. The others were all right but some of them had endings which I wasn’t satisfied with.

In Skin, a miserable old man called Drioli came across a painting in a picture gallery and was shocked to know that a boy he used to know had become a very famous painter. Drioli had requested that the boy paint a picture of a woman, Josie, on his back. Now that painting is worth a lot of money and Drioli made the mistake of announcing it to the visitors of the gallery. A few men have made generous offers for him but can they be trusted?

As for Lamb to the Slaughter, it is my favourite story! The ending was totally brilliant and unpredictable. Well, that was how it’s like for me. Who would have thought that Mary Maloney was such a smart, cunning woman? Out of the blue, her husband told her that he’d be leaving her, for what reason, we don’t really know. Mary was in a daze and went downstairs to the cellar to get a leg of lamb, presumably to make supper. Instead of putting the lamb into the oven first, she decided to whack her husband on the head with it. He fell down, dead.

In Galloping Foxley, William Perkins recalls his school days where he had to be a slave to a senior student named Bruce Foxley aka Galloping Foxley. Perkins usually encountered nothing unusual and met the same people while on his way to work. The arrival of a newbie at the train station had disrupted Perkins normal routine. He then thinks that he sort of knows the new guy and suspects him to be a former bully.

Stories such as An African Story and Beware of the Dog have military elements in them which reflect Dahl’s background in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.

He also wrote a number of other short stories and you can view the list here. I also have The Great Automatic Grammatizator and Other Stories and I’m definitely looking forward to reading more of Dahl’s surprising tales!

Taking a break from novels, I’ve decided to indulge in a book of Malaysian and Asian short stories written by creative writing lecturer, Robert Raymer. Lovers and Strangers Revisited was recently voted most popular in the fiction category of the Popular – The Star Readers’ Choice Awards 2009. I’ve also gotten to know about Raymer when he contributed an article for my campus newspaper.

The title itself is captivating and I can definitely say the same about the stories compiled in the book. There are 17 stories altogether and 16 of them have been published 65 times in 10 countries. Incredible, isn’t it?

Malaysia is a multiracial country where the Malays, Chinese, Indians, Eurasians, Punjabis, Kadazans, Ibans and other races live together in harmony and tolerance. Each group has their own customs and traditions and it’s fascinating to learn about them in addition to learning about ourselves.

I’m impressed with how Raymer managed to write so well about the real essence of being a Malaysian. He certainly knows and understands the various races in the country along with their customs and beliefs. Well, he has lived in Penang for over 20 years and also married a local woman. So he had time to get to know the country. Some of the stories are based on his previous experiences here.

My favourite story is The Future Barrister where a young Indian man who looks like Clark Gable gets drunk in a local bar and starts telling shocking things to a new American friend. The ending of that story made my jaw drop literally. Haha!

The story Smooth Stones also had an ironic and yet predictable ending. A Malay woman buys three “magical” stones from a stranger who claimed that the stones had healing powers. Thinking that the stones could heal her dying husband, the woman paid a large sum of money for them, which looked like they were picked up from the nearby river.

Meanwhile, in The Watcher, a grumpy great-grandfather waits for his great-grandchildren to arrive for Chinese New Year. Sitting on an old wooden bench, he recalls the Japanese invasion into the country while watching the neighbourhood children play with firecrackers. He’ll also occasionally shout out warnings to the children.

In Lovers and Strangers, a writer meets a young woman who looks and talks the same as his former lover who committed suicide. I was waiting for something creepy to happen but then the entire story spells out CREEPY!

I enjoyed reading all the stories in the book. I enjoyed reading about typical Malaysians and our habits that we overlook every day. Raymer must have spent a lot of time writing, editing, and re-writing them. I know because it’s not easy to produce a good short story that wouldn’t let the reader get bored.

This book is highly recommended to anyone who is interested in getting to know Malaysians and also Thailand (Transactions in Thai is set there). If you also need great short story samples, then Lovers and Strangers Revisited is certainly one of the best ones.

In my honest opinion, I found this book quite a difficult read. There are 15 short stories in here and I could not understand all of them. I had to read some of them a couple of times to understand them better. In a way, the stories make you think and form your own opinions about the characters and the endings. Some stories don’t have a clear ending, hence making you guess it.

Mathias B. Freese brings you into the minds of troubled individuals. For example, in ‘I’ll Make It, I Think’, the narrator describes himself as normal-looking at some parts of his body while some aren’t so normal. He says that girls wouldn’t date him because they wouldn’t hold a deformed hand like his. So even though he’s different from the rest, he is still human and has normal human feelings.

In the story ‘Herbie’, Herbie aspires to start a kind of shoeshine business with his friend. His father also polishes shoes for a living and Herbie wants to follow in his footsteps. Unfortunately, despite his son looking up to him, Herbie’s father is not very happy of his son’s idea.

I like the story ‘Alabaster’. It is about an encounter of a 9-year-old boy with an old Polish woman who had survived the Holocaust. She showed him her numbered hand but it’s not clear if the boy understood what it all meant. It’s a simple story but a truly poignant one about a small boy spending time with a lonely old lady by listening to her talk.

All the same, ‘Little Errands’ is exceptionally interesting. The person telling the story is kind of restless. He has mailed his letters but he kept worrying whether he had remembered to put stamps on them or whether the mailman collected them or not. Sometimes, I am like that too. It may just be a little chore but it’s so simple that we feel like we did not do it right. Like something went wrong somewhere and we are not sure about it, that’s why we worry and keep thinking about it!

Have you ever answered back at your teacher probably because you don’t like her or feel that she’s not teaching the right thing? That’s what Nicholas did in ‘Nicholas’. This short story was probably written by the character Nicholas himself since there are spelling and punctuation errors. It seems that he’s not good in English and he receives neither respect nor attention unlike another kid from Iran whose English isn’t that good either.

Most of the short stories are about children and young adults and about how they feel towards themselves as well as their surroundings. Like what I had mentioned earlier, this book gets you thinking and asking questions. That’s how it is with me. What about you?

Also, I’d like to thank Mr. Freese for sending me a copy of Down to a Sunless Sea.

Other Bloggers’ Reviews: gautami tripathy, Melody, KittyCat