25 stories

I'd read and enjoyed most of the stories in this collection already, but the ones I hadn't were a joy. In particular 'Claud's Dog' a long, novella length story (really 5 stories that run together) about the misadventures of 2 young men trying to get rich quick. ( )

None of this appealed to me. If I recall, it reads like a collection of writing stunts. ( )

If you think Roald Dahl is just for children, think again! These short stories were culled from collections of short stories Dahl wrote throughout his career and show incredible range and originality. Each shows a devious and original mind at work and offers a twist... sometimes a double twist in the end which makes you want to read the story over again knowing what you know. A great way to (re)discover an author you thought you already knew via Charley and the Chocolate Factory. I know I'll be getting the Complete Roald Dahl (in two volumes) next as I can't wait to discover all the other gems from this master storyteller who knew how to pull you in and keep you keenly interested from the first words to the last. ( )

Review: the best of Roald Dahl
By Roald Dahl
520 pages
Short Story Collection
Story Diversity: high quality; broad range of characters, settings, and themes used; stories vary wildly in length, and some sound poetic while others are dialogue-centric. Over all, very well done

Vocabulary: standard; didn’t encounter too many college-level words; writing uses plenty of colorful adjectives and verbs, though

Twists: some twists are delivered in shocking fashion, some are subtle, some are questionable—ties into story diversity

Strengths: when Dahl talks about the brain, you’ll think he’s a brain surgeon—extremely detail-oriented writer; characters are colorful; dialogue sounds natural and free-flowing; stories are memorable; pacing nearly always matches the content—makes for a great read

Weaknesses: reoccurring themes can be problematic as they make stories predictable—for example, the theme ‘bad guys get what’s coming to them.’ While stories are diverse and characters are diverse and sentence fluidity is diverse and everything is polychromatic, there’s none of that wild imagination that fueled his children’s books—makes this a bit underwhelming.

Bottom line: if you love his children’s books be warned, this is not the same author writing them—these stories (and a lot of the characters as well) are grimy. While I have no problem with Dahl going down a dark road, I wish some of that incredible imagination carried over from his children’s books.
I liked these short stories, that’s the bottom line. They’re well written and of much better quality than most short story collections. But nearly all of them are (more or less) grounded to reality, which is a minor letdown, considering it’s Dahl’s work. ( )