I’m taking part in Short Story September hosted by Lisa at ANZ LitLovers LitBlog She asks us to read a collection and then choose just one story to review, defining a short story as one that can be read in under an hour. It’s fine to mention the titles of other stories in the collection that you also enjoyed, of course. Aim for a review that’s less than 800 words, but this is not a hard-and-fast rule because some stories need less and others need more.
Roald Dahl is well known for his children’s books. He was a poet, screenwriter and a wartime fighter ace, a military pilot who had officially shot down a minimum number of enemy aircraft, typically five or more, during aerial combat.
He also wrote numerous short stories for adults. There are several collections of these. I have just one – Completely Unexpected Tales by Roald Dahl, which is made up of two collections: Tales of the Unexpected and More Tales of the Unexpected. I first came across Roald Dahl back in 1979 when I used to enjoy watching these tales in the TV series, Tales of the Unexpected. There are 25 short stories in total in this book, some of them are very short, but I prefer the longer stories. As the title suggests these short stories all end with an unexpected twist, some are more predictable than others, but others did take me by surprise with a sting in the tail.
Roald Dahl was born n Llandaff, Glamorgan. His parents were Norwegian. I bought this book at The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in the village of Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire where Dahl lived until his death in 1990. Previously I’ve read and enjoyed some of his children’s books.
On the back cover Completely Unexpected Tales is described as a superb compendium of vengeance, surprise and dark delight. I haven’t read all the stories yet but a couple stand out for me.The first is William and Mary, which was originally published in 1959 and included in his 1960 collection Kiss Kiss, a sinister story about the darker side of human nature.
After William Pearl died his wife, Mary received a letter which both surprised and shocked her. It wasn’t at all what she had expected. A domineering, unpleasant man he began in usual bossy way by telling her to:
continue to observe those precepts which have guided you so well daring our partnership together. Be diligent and dignified in all things. Be thrifty with your money. Be very careful that you do not . . . et cetera, et cetera.
She had hoped he might have written her something beautiful, that maybe he’d thank her for giving him thirty years of her life and for ironing a million shirts and cooking a million meals and making a million beds, something that she could read over and over again, once a day at least.
But, no this was a letter describing a scientific experiment that Doctor Landy, an Oxford University colleague wanted to do on his brain immediately after his death from cancer. She was shocked and appalled as he proceeded to tell her in great detail what it entailed.
He ended his letter with a postscript reminding her not to drink cocktails… waste money… smoke cigarettes… buy a television apparatus.
After she read it all, she reached for a cigarette, lit it, inhaling the smoke deeply and blowing it out in clouds all over the room. Through the smoke she could see her lovely television set, brand new, lustrous, huge, crouching defiantly but also a little self-consciously on top of what used to be William’s worktable. What would he say, she wondered, if he could see that now?
He disapproved of smoking and also of children and they’d never had any. But after thirty years of doing what he told her, she felt she had to follow his instructions and rang Landy to see whether the experiment had gone ahead. It had and Dahl describes it in disgusting and repulsive detail.
This is a story about control, revenge and the dark side of human relationships and as I read it I wonder how Mary would react. She’d already gone against his ban on smoking and watching television. But would she really break free of his control and could she indeed take revenge on him?
The other story features a couple with a very different marriage – Mrs Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat. Mrs Bixby has been having a secret affair for years with an extremely wealthy man known as the Colonel. When he gives her a beautiful mink coat she wonders what to tell her husband about where she got it. In the end she decides to pawn the coat and tell him she found the pawn ticket in a taxi and then she can retrieve the coat. But will this plan work? Is her dentist husband really as ignorant of her affair as she thinks. I was pleased with the ending of this story of betrayal and deception.
BooksPlease 