Boy

Title: Boy

Author: Roald Dahl

Number of pages: 176

Started: 12 November 2008

Finished: 19 November 2008

Opening words:

My father, Harald Dahl, was a Norwegian who came from a small town near Oslo, called Sarpsborg. His own father, my grandfather, was a fairly prosperous merchant who owned a store in Sarpsborg and traded in just about everything from cheese to chicken-wire.

I am writing these words in 1984, but this grandfather of mine was born, believe it or not, in 1820, shortly after Wellington had defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. If my grandfather had been alive today, he would have been one hundred and sixty-four years old. My father would have been one hundred and twenty-one. Both my father and my grandfather were late starters so far as children were concerned.

When my father was fourteen, which is still more than one hundred years ago, he was up on the roof of the family house replacing some loose tiles when he slipped and fell. He broke his left arm below the elbow somebody ran to fetch the doctor, and half an hour later this gentleman made a majestic and drunken arrival in his horse-drawn buggy he was so drunk that he mistook the fractured elbow for a dislocated shoulder.

Plot summary:

“Many remarkable things did happen to Roald Dahl when he was a boy, and maybe that's where some of the marvellous ideas for his books came from. This is the story of his own childhood.”

What I thought:

I must have last read this book over twenty years ago. It was more gruesome than I remembered and had some really horrid moments – just the sort of thing a child might like!

It was a good book and showed where some of his book ideas came from and was an enjoyable read in itself.

A good light read (with a few gruesome bits!)