I LOVE this book. I already love memoirs told by quirky narrators that travel around the world, and I love Roald Dahl's kids books like woah, so this was a perfect book for me to read!

I only knew a little bit about Roald Dahl before I read this book, mainly some from video clips I found online about where he wrote his books and how he helped invent a cerebral shunt. I had no idea that he had been a pilot for the RAF or that he spent time overseas!

Funny things happen in Going Solo, and some sad things as well (it does partly take place during a war, after all). Mr. Dahl tells it all with his trademark wit and humor, but with a lot of love as well. He may make fun of "empire-builders" (expats who have spent so much time in foreign lands they've gone completely insane) but he has a fondness for them as well, and that comes through in his writing. And when he wrote about his fellow pilot and friend, who ended up being killed later on in the war? Yeah, I teared up.

I liked how the story was interspersed with photos and bits of letters Mr. Dahl wrote to his mother, who was living back in England at the time. The letters are sweet, and though the pictures aren't really good quality (I think it might have something to do with being printed directly onto the paper, instead of on higher quality photo paper) it's nice seeing how Mr. Dahl and his friends looked back then. Most of the pictures were actually taken by Mr. Dahl himself, who toted around a camera practically the entire time he was in the war.

The only complaint I have about Going Solo is that it's too darn short. I wish he had written a great big honking tome about everything he did instead of just two little ones about the first 30 or so years of his life. He seems like such a nifty person in his memoirs, and I wish he had written more. I did get a copy of Boy, the first part to his memoirs, so I can read that, and then there's My Year, written the year before he died, but I don't think there's anything else. And biographies aren't the same. Sigh.

If you like Roald Dahl, his books, or even just WWII memoirs or travel narratives, you'll love this book. It's short, but it's hilarious and touching and exciting, and it's really worth reading. ( )

Another writer once told me that one of the most important elements to be found in a memoir is a "likeable" narrator. Roald Dahl is perhaps one of the MOST likeable of narrators. Modest to a fault and blessed with a very sly and subtle sense of humor, the story Dahl tells in GOING SOLO, his sequel to BOY, is perhaps one of the most readable memoirs of modern times. His story of the quick and almost informal training he received at a flying school in Africa shortly after Great Britain entered WWII, is hair-raising and nearly impossible to believe, except you do believe, because you trust this man. At six foot six inches tall, Dahl was physically quite unsuited to be a fighter pilot, noting that when seated in the various planes he flew, his knees were nearly under his chin and he had to hunch over to fit beneath the plane's canopy. But fly he did, even after surviving one horrific crash in the desert early on in his career as an RAF pilot. He sustained a very bad concussion (which was to come back to haunt him and finally "invalid" him out of service nearly two years later) and had his face bashed in. As he explained to his mother in a letter: "My nose was bashed in ... and the ear nose and throat man pulled my nose out of the back of my head and shaped it and now it looks just as before except that it's a little bent about ..." Dahl went on to fly many combat missions in North Africa and Greece, usually against vastly superior odds, but somehow he managed to survive until the middle of 1941, when the migraine headaches caused by the aforementioned crash made him unfit for further flying. Dahl's nearly laconic and completely unself-conscious manner of writing about the things he did - absolutely heroic things - made me think of Sam Hynes's WWII memoir of his missions in the Pacific theater. Both writers downplay the importance of their roles. They never speak of heroics or derring-do, only about the importance of their comrades, doing the jobs they were trained to do and trying their best to simply stay alive. This was an enormously satisfying, moving and often hilarious tale. After reading these two slim volumes of memoirs by Dahl, I do wish he had written another. I have ordered his slim collection of stories about WWII already. What a wonderful writer - and gentleman - Roald Dahl was. ( )

Roald Dahl's story of his service as a fighter pilot in England's Royal Air Force in the Middle East during World War II. ( )

This tells of the author's time in Africa from 1938 till he enlisted in the RAF , and then tells of his horrendous time in Libya, where he crashed and his plane burned, he barely escaping. Then when he recovered he was sent to Greece, and the accounts of his doings there are of high interest. One stands in awe of his youthful exploits, told in high good humor. This was an outstnding war account, though it only goes up to 1941. ( )

Absolutely fascinating account of Roald Dahl's life after secondary school which was spent firstly in Africa and then flying planes in WW2. Roald shows great initiative and the brash daring of the young as he gets involved in all sorts of schemes ( fighting snakes in Africa) or hiding from the Germans in Greece. A wonderful captivating book by the master storyteller.