Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life

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Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life (Reprint) Pub. Date: 4/28/1991 Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life Pub. Date: 11/1/1990 Publisher: Macmillan Library Reference

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Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life Pub. Date: 3/17/1990 Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Rereading the seven stories collected here, observes Dahl in his preface, fills the British author with ``acute nostalgia and with vivid memories of those sweet days'' after WW II, when he wrote for four hours a day and then set off for the rolling, rural landscape of England's Buckinghamshire, looking for mischief. Yet little to date in Dahl's ( My Uncle Oswald ) fictional universe has been merely wistful or gentle, and these delicious tales, based loosely on Dahl's youthful exploits in the countryside, are in fact full of his characteristic literary capers; the works build, by book's end, a rustic community populated by con artists, poachers and thieves, where each man buffets his neighbor for supremacy and even the most stealthy among them strives to outdo adversaries with pranks. ``My dear friends, you've no idea the trouble these rascals will go to,'' declaims a bogus clergyman in ``Parson's Pleasure,'' where scams give life its meaning. This man of the cloth is actually an antiques dealer who uses his costume to persuade suspicious countrymen to accept small sums for their inherited valuables, which bring him large profits. Here and elsewhere, Dahl shrewdly uses ostensibly simple fables as vehicles for richly mordant examinations of human foibles. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Apr.)

School Library Journal

YA-- Written in the late 1940s, these seven short stories were originally published in American magazines and are collected here for the first time. The secret of determining the sex of a calf, the parson who collects antiques by duplicity, the illegal greyhound races using a ringer, the ingenious poaching methods for pheasant using raisins and sleeping pills, and a proposed maggot factory are among the everyday occurrences in a British village, related with deft craftsmanship in Dahl's unmatched style. A touch of irony, unexpected endings, and a hint of the wicked and shocking are couched in Dahl's brand of humor; young adults will accept the gruesome details as natural and entertaining. Black-and-white line drawings complement the text with character illustrations. A book that's useful for readers interested in writing, humor, and memorable characters and a possibility for booktalk introductions. --Julia M. Losinski, Prince George's County Memorial Library System, Hyattsville, MD

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780140118476
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Publication date: 4/28/1991
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 176
Sales rank: 1,075,250
Series: Windsor Series
Product dimensions: 5.15 (w) x 7.81 (h) x 0.49 (d)

Meet the Author

Roald Dahl

Kids and adults alike love Roald Dahl’s deliciously wicked books. Loved for their gleefully evil villains and their often mischievous sensibility, Dahl’s books introduce us to fantastic creatures and bizarre places -- and encourage our imaginations to run wild.

Biography

"I have never met a boy who so persistently writes the exact opposite of what he means," a teacher once wrote in the young Roald Dahl's report card. "He seems incapable of marshaling his thoughts on paper." From such inauspicious beginnings emerged an immensely successful author whom The Evening Standard would one day dub "one of the greatest children's writers of all time."

Dahl may have been an unenthusiastic student, but he loved adventure stories, and when he finished school he went out into the world to have some adventures of his own. He went abroad as a representative of the Shell corporation in Dar-es-Salaam, and then served in World War II as a pilot in the Royal Air Force. After the war, Dahl began his writing career in earnest, publishing two well-received collections of short stories for adults, along with one flop of a novel.

The short stories, full of tension and subtle psychological horror, didn't seem to presage a children's author. Malcolm Bradbury wrote in The New York Times Book Review, "[Dahl's] characters are usually ignoble: he knows the dog beneath the skin, or works hard to find it." Yet this talent for finding, and exposing, the nastier sides of grown-up behavior served him well in writing for children. As Dahl put it, "Writing is all propaganda, in a sense. You can get at greediness and selfishness by making them look ridiculous. The greatest attribute of a human being is kindness, and all the other qualities like bravery and perseverance are secondary to that."

In 1953, Dahl married the actress Patricia Neal; two of his early children's books, James and the Giant Peach (1961) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) grew out of the bedtime stories he made up for their children. Elaine Moss, writing in the Times, called the latter "the funniest children's book I have read in years; not just funny but shot through with a zany pathos which touches the young heart." Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a colossal hit. A film version starring Gene Wilder was released in 1971 (as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory), while James and the Giant Peach was made into a movie in 1996.

Dahl followed his initial successes with a string of bestsellers, including Danny, the Champion of the World, The Twits, The BFG, The Witches and Matilda. Some adults objected to the books' violence -- unpleasant characters (like James’s Aunts Sponge and Spiker) tend to get bumped off in grotesque and inventive ways -- but Dahl defended his stories as part of a tradition of gruesome fairy tales in which mean people get what they deserve. "These tales are pretty rough, but the violence is confined to a magical time and place," he said, adding that children like violent stories as long as they're "tied to fantasy and humor." By the time of his death in 1990, Dahl's mischievous wit had captivated so many readers that The Times called him "one of the most widely read and influential writers of our generation."

Good To Know

When Dahl was in school, he and his schoolmates occasionally served as new-product testers for the Cadbury chocolate company. Dahl used to dream of working in a chocolate manufacturer's inventing room. He wrote in his autobiography, "I have no doubt at all that, 35 years later, when I was looking for a plot for my second book for children, I remembered those little cardboard boxes and the newly invented chocolates inside them, and I began to write a book called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

Dahl's first book for children, The Gremlins (1943), was a story about the mythical creatures that sabotaged British planes. (Dahl claimed for most of his life that he had coined the term "gremlins," but it had been in use by members of the Royal Air Force for years.) Walt Disney planned to use it as the basis for a movie, but the project was scrapped, and only 5,000 copies of the book were ever printed.

1. Date of Birth:
  
  September 13, 1916
2. Place of Birth:
  
  Llandaff, Wales, England
1. Date of Death:
  
  November 23, 1990
2. Place of Death:
  
  Oxford, England

Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life Preface Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life Parson's Pleasure The Ratcatcher Rummins Mr. Hoddy Mr. Feasey The Champion of the World

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Anonymous

Posted September 10, 2004

Excellent change in pace for Dahl

I read this collection of short stories thinking it would be remeniscent of the stories I read of Dahl's as a child. I was oh so wrong. Instead I was captivated by the crass humor and hilarious plots. I would recommend this to anyone who is willing to see Dahl as more than a children's writer.
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Meet the Author

Roald Dahl

Biography

Good To Know

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Excellent change in pace for Dahl