Skin and Other Stories by Roald Dahl

Wednesday, November 11, 2009 by 5 Comments

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!

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The BFG by Roald Dahl

Saturday, March 8, 2008 by 1 Comment

The BFG by Roald Dahl
Publisher: Puffin Books | 2001 (first published 1982) | 200 pages
Buy on Amazon

When I first heard of The BFG, I thought it’s short for some scientific term that I did not know. Was I surprised when I found out that it’s short for The Big Friendly Giant! This is also the third Dahl book that I’ve read and it’s entertaining. The only set-back was the extraordinary words that Dahl created and the BFG’s broken English.

However, I found some interesting words that do not exist, for example, squackling, biffsquiggled, flushbunking, and lots more! After all, it is a story book and it’s supposed to be superbly fun!

Anyway, one night, during the witching hour, Sophie, a bespectacled orphan girl, was ‘kidnapped’ by The BFG. She had seen him and the giant thought he had better bring her back to his home so that she couldn’t tell the whole of England and the whole world that she had seen a giant. The BFG then brought her back to his cave/home in Giant Country.

Sophie and The BFG soon strike an unlikely friendship. The BFG is kind and sympathetic and Sophie likes him. The other 9 giants in that country are horrible and they eat humans. Therefore, The BFG has to hide Sophie in his cave where she’ll be safe. And no, The BFG doesn’t gobble up humans.

Besides that, The BFG has excellent hearing. He can hear things that we can’t normally hear. For example, he can hear a flower scream when it’s being plucked. He can hear a terrible sound a tree makes when it’s being chopped. He can hear the beating of your heart even though you are quite a distance away from him.

The screaming flower and chopping tree parts are also told in The Sound Machine, also written by Roald Dahl. Dahl was probably passionate about preserving the environment and making the world a better place. In The BFG, The BFG is proud of being a giant because he says that giants don’t kill their own kind. So are the animals. Only humans go around killing each other, especially in terrible wars.

The BFG likes to collect dreams, too. The dreams are invisible but he can hear them. He catches the dreams with his net in Dream Country where the dreams float around invisibly. He then keeps his dreams in jars and at night, he blows the dreams into children’s bedrooms where they’re sleeping. The dreams that he gives to the sleeping children are always good and happy dreams.

Anyhow, one day, the human-eating giants decide to visit England to feast on English children. Sophie was horrified and insists that she and The BFG go to England to tell the Queen everything about the nasty giants. The BFG was afraid to go at first but after persuasion from Sophie, he agreed to help her capture the giants with the Queen’s help.

I like the ending of the story. Read it and then you’ll see how Dahl ends his story in a clever way.

Other Bloggers’ Reviews: Melange, T

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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

Wednesday, December 5, 2007 by 10 Comments

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Series: Charlie Bucket #1
Publisher: Puffin Books | 1985 (first published 1964) | 160 pages
Buy on Amazon

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, first published in 1962, probably became even more popular after a movie based on this story came out in cinemas. Unfortunately, I did not watch the whole movie yet and I think that Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka is quite suitable. After all, Mr. Wonka is an eccentric character and I’m sure Depp plays the role to perfection.

Anyway, the hero is Charlie Bucket and his family is extremely poor. His father is the only one in his family who is working but his pay is not enough to buy the proper amount of food for his whole family. Also, Charlie’s grandparents are very old and they stay on their bed all day and night. But, everyday, Charlie will sit on the bed and talk with his grandparents. This cheers them up despite having to live in such poor conditions.

And every day on the way to school, Charlie passes Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. When Charlie’s birthday was coming up, something exciting happened too. After so many years since he’s reopened his chocolate factory, Willy Wonka is inviting 5 children to visit his factory. He’s inserted 5 golden tickets in 5 random chocolate bars and the lucky 5 kids who find those tickets can see what it is like inside the factory.

As luck would have it, Charlie is the fifth person to find the last Golden Ticket. The other four lucky finders are Augustus Gloop – a boy who loves to eat, Veruca Salt – a rich, spoilt brat, Violet Beauregarde – a girl who likes to chew on chewing gum, and Mike Teavee – a boy who always watches television. Aren’t they an interesting mix?

The day of the visit is on Feb 1. Charlie is accompanied by his Grandpa Joe. As they enter the factory, all the visitors are overwhelmed by the beauty and the heavenly chocolatey smell there. Wow, wouldn’t I want to drink a cup of melted chocolate from the chocolate river? How I wish there’s a real Chocolate Room somewhere like the one in Wonka’s factory!

Besides that, the children got to see Willy Wonka’s secret workers, the Oompa-Loompas! These Oompa-Loompas are small people who love singing and eating cacao beans. It’s certainly a magical chocolate factory and new surprises lie in wait for all the visitors. Good and bad surprises.

The book that comes after this is Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Oh, Dahl probably doesn’t like the television very much. The joy and wonders of reading is clearly stressed in one of the Oompa-Loompas’ songs!

Other Bloggers’ Reviews: Tatiana, 20223banana, Alice, KittyCat

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