WR DECEMBER

 Composition. DAHL's NEGATIVE REVIEW 

 (not a mild one!)
 a 320-word text on R Dahl's novel

DEADLINE: 17th December

All that glitters is not Dahl by Aitor G J

Roald Dahl is famous for having written books such as Matilda, which is his most known novel. All his literature works are mainly aimed to children. Despite that fact, some weeks ago I came across a different book of his: Ten Short Stories. Trust me when I say we should all think of calling it Ten Harsh Stories.

Predictably, you may think I didn’t like it. However these are words which are still not strong enough to define the feeling I had after having read them. Admittedly, the author had the intention to write stories with a wry sense of humour and eccentric characters. As a matter of fact, though, the stories were completely nonsense and unrealistic and the characters had a rather deceiving attitude towards the situations they had to encounter.

What might also be essential to dissuade an innocent reader who has the purpose of buying this book is, to start with, the irony which the author fails to use. Of course, literary resources like the one provided are probably too complex to use for the writer. Therefore, not much quality should be expected on this. However, Dahl’s irony is the worse of its kind. Apart from being quite silly, it is very difficult to understand due to its complexity. In my opinion, the author should have focused more on getting his message across in rough and ready language rather than writing so many unnecessary lines which fail to be comic.

In conclusion, I strongly advise any reader to reject the tempting idea of spending some time reading it since it would be wasting your time which you’d better invest on reading the yellow pages.

 Aitor GJ 

The Hidden Dark Soul by Haritha Chalil Savithri

Roald Dahl (1916-1990), is the author of many children's books and fiction for adults. They are still famous, relevant and entertaining readers globally. Dahl's short stories are well known for surprise twists, black humour and readability.

 Because of the sophisticated language and the nature of conventionally satisfying morality in his tales, Dahl is not much attacked for the unseen negativity. There is an invisible stream of naive perversions of humanity in Roald Dahl´s stores for adults. Normally Dahl´s stories end with disturbing conclusions, fraudulent schemes or sudden revelations that can destroy reader’s assumptions. Even though his stories are served with the support of delicious narrative, the innate darkness leaves a bitter taste in reader´s mind. Presence of a hidden streak of cynicism and cruelty seems to be instinctive than a deliberate attempt. Dahl´s negative fantasies are sugar coated with charm of his narrative in his short stories for adults.

 With a positive intention to create the right ambience to unfold the story, Dahl illustrates a detailed account of the landscape, life, locality and background. To an extend this can amuse the conventional readers but does not suite the present-day demands for adventurous experiments in narrative techniques. Normally Dahl develops the plot in a tiring leisurely manner. His stories start in slow pace, gradually develops tension and ends with a sudden twist. Readers who are familiar with this monotonous format appreciated them once, but the new generation of readers who are familiar with different styles may prefer unidentical structures.

 To make the story more appealing, Dahl makes the conversations unnecessarily long and detailed. By developing the story through detailed conversations, Dahl intents to enlighten the readers with more information. But avoidable descriptions and conversations can cause boredom and destroy the interest of reader.

 As a writer who deals with both adults´ and children´s literature, Dahl sometimes forgets the border between the two. By concentrating in minute details, he satisfies his little fans and will do forever. But influence of children´s literature often appears unintentionally in his stories for adults. It becomes difficult to differentiate between Dahl´s children´s literature and fiction for adults. His adult stories also are educational in nature and tend to have a moral lesson as if it is written for children.

 Cynicism and contempt for the entire world are some pessimistic elements hidden underneath the polished rendering of Dahl´s well known stories. Dahl develops kind of mistrust in the virtues of the world and denies the chance to expect positive possibilities. As an influential writer he missed his chance to develop hope and trust in the minds of his readers and make the world a better place.

 Dahl really didn´t know what it was like to trust in humanity, no matter how much did he write. The success of a short story writer depends largely on creating different structures in each story that he writes. All his short stories are celebrations of atrocities and follow the same pattern all the time. Roald Dahl does not rise to this challenge of diversity in his well-known short stories.

Dahl’s carefully well written, nonsense stories by Nuria P.

After having read the book “Ten short stories” written by Roahl Dahl I feel completely uncapable of making a raving review. In that case I must admit that the result of these words would have a different air of what many people could think about this recognized and well-known writer.

First of all, I would like to mention that I admired quite a lot this author. One of his most important best-sellers, without doubt, being “Matilda”, the worldwide acknowledged volume.  I, for one,  remember having fun when I read it.  So, when “Ten Short Stories” arrived at my hands, enjoyable memories of the Welsh author and “Matilda”’s  tome came back my mind, what made me eager to read it  quickly.

I confess that the first story I read, which was “The Butler", I found it strange, completely nonsense but I could understand that the  author had something special to tell us, so he got the message across clearly in a complex narration.  The second story, The Umbrella man" gave credit to my first, gloomy thoughts.  As a whole, now I consider the book full of strange stories with a surrealistic plot and full of eccentric characters.   All the stories share this Dahl’s irony that is very peculiar to him.

Taking into consideration that Roah Dahl is famous for his best book “Matilda”, I think that in general his books are mainly addressed to children.  As a matter of fact, though, these kind of careless stories may be very profitable for children. Apart from that, I consider quite useful the characters to someone interested in phycology.  For example, in “Mr Botibol” the main character is regarded as a person without self-confidence in himself. 

In fact, I cannot recommend this book although it is hard for me to remember the last time I discovered a novel as weird and freaky as this one.  Perhaps Dahl thought he had created an authentic book, but, from my point of view, it is far away from a masterpiece or even a humorous one.

In conclusion, to be fully honest with myself, I rarely did not enjoy his other work, but in this case it is a hard one to recommend it to anyone despite being written by a famous author.  Reading it, I have learnt that Roald Dahl is kind of master at overtwisting the stories and complicate them till turning them difficult to be accepted or  left the message understood. Obviously, although the stories are nonsense regarding the meaning and characters are impossible to fall in love with, they are carefully well written.

Ten short stories, ten long nightmares to read

By Joan Martinez Vila

 I regret every second that I have spent reading this book. I sincerely regret it. Roald Dahl is supposed to be a master in telling stories, but I have truly found this book very awful and unpleasant for reading. I cannot see the point in what Roald Dahl has done in this book. I do not find it very interesting and not at all catchy for the reader. There are few reasons for starting to read this book, and if you have already started to read it, there are even fewer reasons for continuing reading it. 

There are few stories worth reading, and those which are worth reading are simply and powerless to the reader. It is supposed to be in each story some moral or criticism towards some aspect in society, once I have read the entirely book all I can say is the only moral or criticism that one can take from the book, is towards its author.  In each story, Dahl tells very poorly what he wants to transmit, and almost never he achieves what he wants to tell. I really think that the author took a lot of time to explain his ideas and he got a very forced plot where almost never the reader seems to enjoy its reading.

What to say about the characters when I found them all terrible. There are none to be worth mentioning. In fact, I cannot remember the name of any of them. The stories are too short, or too boring for taking care about its characters. The only feeling that you can feel towards its characters is pity for being part of such a terrible literary story. If I could have felt some sympathy towards some character Dahl was successful in taking away that sympathy from me. None of their actions are worth commenting, their actions were forced to prove Dahl’s point but he did not achieve its purpose in any story. 

To sum up this absurdity, I must say that I believe in telling morals and in criticize certain aspects of society through telling short stories, but in this book, Dahl did not achieve any of his purposes when he wrote his stories. Overall, I do not know if fifty years ago some reader would enjoy while he reads the book, but I am sure of one thing, today, nobody can read this book and have a good time, or even find it pleasant to his mind. 

Ten short stories, ten dull, unworthy stories by Carlos O

Almost everybody has read one book written by the world known British novelist Roald Dahl. Personally, I have read several books written by him, such as Matilda, The Witches and George’s Marvelous Medicine, all of them in English, but I feel disappointed at this compilation of non-sense short stories.

As a start, I would say that I didn’t like the book because it was disconcerting and blurring to read although it is a rather short book. As far I am concerned this compilation seems to have been written  by an amateur in the art of writing, it doesn’t seem a book written by Dahl that is why I am disappointed, I have grown up reading his books and I feel that this book doesn’t reflect the author’s witty and sarcastic humor.

Secondly, from my point of view the stories were very plain and boring, many of them try to be funny but they fail badly trying to achieve some sense of humor, personally several times I didn’t catch the jokes at the ending of almost all of the stories. Even some stories have “black humor”, which I found a bit disrespectful and impolite considering the importance of the author. Moreover It seems as the author tried to make fun of English rural society stigmatizing them as rude, ultra-conservative and foolish. American characters are also portrayed in this book as rude, vain and disingenuous.

Thirdly, I think that the “lessons” that each story tries to teach us at the end of each chapter are no longer in vogue, many of the situations explained at the stories were partially outdated nowadays because the main plot of every story happened during the 50s (even before ... Elvis Presley).

Finally,  a warning to anybody who has thought of buying this book candidly, don’t do it unless you want to be disappointed with the author if you have grown up with his books as it was my case, you might found reading this volume boring, dumb ... and heavy as well.

Ten Pretty Boring Short Stories indeed by Efrem Batriu

Roald Dahl is said to be one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century. He is well-known for writing acclaimed bestsellers like "James and the Giant Peach", "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" or "Matilda". However, during his career, Roald also wrote some short stories for the adult public. Some of them are compiled in "Ten Short Stories".

I've never read any book of Dahl but I knew he was considered a great storyteller so I had high expectations for "Then Short Stories" Unfortunately the book hadn't fulfilled any of them. In all the stories, the author depicts weird events were bizarre personages are always involved. Those situations are meant to put a smile on reader's face that the author want to froze by ending the stories in an unexpected macabre way. I love that kind of narrative trick, but to work appropriately the author must be able to make us smile and then remove our guts by an unexpected ending. Unfortunately, Roald doesn't succeed in any of this things. Most of stories are not funny enough and the endings are highly predictable.

I don't know if Roald is a great children storyteller but, according to my opinion, he is an awful adult storyteller. Therefore, if during your childhood you enjoyed Roald books don't spoil your memories by reading their adult stories. If you haven't enjoyed Roald as a child I regret to tell you that you wouldn't enjoy him as an adult. But there are some good news for you. If you, ignoring my advice, still dare to read "Ten Short Stories" you wouldn't lose a lot of time cause the book, at least, is short like the title said.