Reviewed by Cameron Trost on
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 5 July, 2013: Finished reading
- 5 July, 2013: Reviewed
Someone Like You
by Roald Dahl
In addition to his celebrated childrens' books such as James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl wrote short fiction for adult audiences, and the tales collected in Someone Like You are dark, witty morsels of intrigue and suspense from a master storyteller. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is published with a foreword by Dom Joly.
These eighteen tales of the macabre show Dahl's dark brilliance as a short story writer. They are wicked (as an old man attracts the attentions of those more interested in his skin than his wellbeing), shocking (as distasteful bets are made - a daughter's hand on the identity of a glass of claret, a finger risked for a Cadillac) and blackly humorous (as a cuckolded husband receives a chance to take his revenge out on his wife's neck). Someone Like You is as devilishly ingenious and suspenseful as writing gets.
With the publication of James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the 1960s, Roald Dahl (1916-90) became the most successful children's author in the world, Roald Dahl. Nearly twenty years after his death in 1990, a fresh generation of children seek out his work with instinctive fanaticism. His creations endure - through Hollywood movies, theatre adaptations and musical works, but still most potently through the pure magic of his writing upon the page.
If you enjoyed Someone Like You, you might like Saki's The Complete Short Stories, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.
'Fantastic as Grimm, heartless as Saki'
Guardian