Roald Dahl: Teller of the Unexpected: A Biography

This is a quick read (230-odd pages of text in a small hardcover with huge margins) and in many regards feels like an expanded outline as opposed to a completed biography. All of Dennison's sources are secondary, which is fine, and it seems well-sourced. However, most of his quotes are either from Dahl's letters or his writing; with a few occasional exceptions, others are usually paraphrased. And the use of Dahl's writing is odd: Dennison frequently uses very short quotes (a sentence or less) from a story to compare with some element of Dahl's life or environment, but especially after the 1950s, the actual process of Dahl's writing is given short shrift. For the most part, Dennison seems to assume we know most of what there is to be show more known about his famous children's books, and we only get a couple of quick facts relating to each one.

The most significant thing about Dennison's book is the extra focus given to Dahl's mother, Sofie, and how she may have influenced both positive and negative aspects to his personality, including his persistence, his grandiosity, and his treatment of trauma as "adventure." This is the most developed theme of the book and goes some way to making it feel like a response to earlier biographies as opposed to one in its own right. Additionally, Denison details elements of his schooling and time with the RAF that Dahl would, deliberately or otherwise, misrepresent in later life - this also appears to be new information.

I think this could be a volume with which to open an examination of Dahl's life, but large portions of it are so thinly sketched it cannot possibly be the last word. I have not read the sanctioned biography, "Storyteller," but while harsh in places, Jeremy Treglown's book from 1994 - which includes quotes taken from interviews with numerous primary sources - is simply a much better biography, with a better structure, and far more context for most aspects of Dahl's life outside his childhood. show less