The only hardcover edition of Roald Dahl’s stories for adults, the Collected Stories amply showcases his singular gifts as a fabulist and a born storyteller.•“An ingenious imagination, a fascination with odd and ordinary detail . . . are the first strengths of Dahl’s storytelling.”— NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2022-12-10 14:08:44 Autocrop_version 0.0.14_books-20220331-0.2 Bookplateleaf 0010 Boxid IA40791610 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Dahl’s adult stories are not as famous as his children’s books. Taken as a whole, The Collected Stories is as impressive as Saki’s Complete Works if you ask me. In his adult fiction, Dahl rolls up his sleeves, wipes away the creamy kiddie layer and lets it hang out in all its macabre glory. Even a sweet story like a boy going to live with his vegetarian grandmother, like in The Witches, turned out to have a far more horrifying result than I expected. Roald Dahl's fascination with the twisted and the grotesque can definitely be seen in his works for children, and in his adult fiction is laid bare in glorious form, with one added element necessarily absent from his children's fiction- some of his adult stories are what might be described as 'fruity'. Not out of character for the author, I've come to understand, and you'll see it in stories like 'Switch Bitch' and any of his stories involving Uncle Oswald, a blatant Author Avatar (thank you TV Tropes).

Vengeance is Mine, Inc.” is the first comedy of the business acumen variety in the book. A harebrained scheme turns out miraculously well, while capturing the spirit of industry which so easily consumes and encapsulates a whole history of human affairs.No voy a descubrir ahora que Dahl es un grandísimo escritor pero quizás sí os descubra que algunos de sus cuentos son aburridos y muchos se parecen. Ahora mismo, podria recordar con nitidez diez o quizás quince de los más de cuarenta que recoge el volumen, los demás están perdidos en una maraña de apuestas, timadores en busca de beneficio, objetos antiguos, botellas de vinos y bellas mujeres en peligro por el impulso sexual irrefrenable de hombres incapaces de contenerse. Entre todos ellos, me gustaría destacar el cuento más autobiográfico que aparece al final del libro, cuando estás a punto de hacer cumbre a sus mil páginas y ya no puedes más. En ese cuento, Dahl explica como llegó a ser escritor, como descubrió su amor por la literatura y cómo los azares de la vida y un anfitrión mal conversador le hicieron sentarse a escribir y descubrir que podía hacerlo y lo hacía bien. Es una delicia de historia. These are not fairy tales. 'Parable' and 'fable' might be words which describe the technique he employs here and there but any of his writerly choices are cast in a modern light. Combinations of outrageous description and stellar plots characterize the majority of the tales. Characters who transform into the things they are consumed by reminded me of The Witches and film adaptations of his children's books.

Detail is paramount to the success of most stories. But the sales pitch is one of the things at which Dahl excels. His characters, when they're not selling a product, are peddling an idea.

Success!

An ingenious imagination, a fascination with odd and ordinary detail . . . are the first strengths of Dahl’s storytelling.” With the inventive power of a Thomas Edison and the imagination of a Lewis Carroll . . . Roald Dahl is a wizard of comedy and the grotesque, an artist with a marvelously topsy-turvy sense of the ridiculous in life.” His worst story is on the subject of cow-birthing. Occasionally his far-fetched ideas are simply absurd, without being clever enough to propel the reader’s interest. But the vast majority are incredibly satisfying to read. He has a kid squeezed up a narrow pipe in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and experiences an impromptu liposuction. He has two aunts steamrolled by a giant peach in James and the Giant Peach and left for dead. He has a husband and wife play pranks on each other, one of which leaves the other floating up into the clear blue with her arms trussed up. If it were Stephen King writing, you'd get a better sense of how twisted these situations are. Containing all the stories from Roald Dahl's world-famous books – Over to You, Someone Like you, Kiss Kiss and Switch Bitch – plus eight further tales of the unexpected, this is the definitive collection by one of the great masters of the short story. Macabre, unsettling and deliciously enjoyable, these stories make the perfect bedtime read – but be warned, once you've started reading you won't be able to stop . . .