Product Description

Stories included: Taste, Lamb to Slaughter, Man from the South, Dip in the Pool, Skin, Neck, Nunc Dimittis, The Landlady, William and Mary, The Way up to Heaven, Parsons Pleasures, Mrs Bixby and the Colonel Coat, Royal Jelly, Edward the Conqueror, Galloping Foxley.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #157003 in Books
• Published on: 1979-02-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
From the publication of James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the 1960s to his death in 1990, Roald Dahl became the most successful children’s author in the world. Nearly twenty years later, 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 of all through the pure magic of his writing upon the page.

Customer Reviews

Wickedly dark tales from the master of surprise.
What a special writer Roald Dahl is. In this collection of short stories we see his full range of rampant storytelling,gloriously macabre humour,and totally unpredictable twists. Check out the father who feeds his son Royal Jelly with ominous results,or the cruise passenger who jumps overboard to win a bet. See a man`s schooldays return to haunt him in GALLOPING FOXLEY,and a scheming wife`s shock in MRS BIXBY AND THE COLONAL`S COAT. All these and more ,told with style and glee,perfectly weighted to keep you hooked until the bitter end.

Fantastically strange!!
This book is very clever in the sense that Roald Dahl has managed to combine comedy ; horror ; murder and a whole host of other factors all into one book.
Definately a book that will keep you hooked from the beginning to the end.

Blimey, That was Unexpected!
Blimey, That was Unexpected!

A silly little review of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected




I grew up on Roald Dahl. With food, drink and oxygen I also had a brief flirtation, but the stories of Roald Dahl were my true love. I marvelled at the fantastic effects of George's marvellous medicine, cheered for the fantastic Mr. Fox, and got a bit unnerved by The Witches (although this was owing more to the protagonist's creepy grandmother than the villains of the story).

Imagine my delight, then, upon receiving Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected as a birthday present. A two-hundred and eighty-ish page collection of charming short fiction from one of my favourite writers of all time! I assumed.

And I assumed correctly. The fiction is both short and charming (and, by some immense stroke of luck, it seemed, I had even guessed the number of pages correctly). While the witches and chocolate factories are non-existent, the masterful prose and unique, interesting characters are in abundance. Highlights include Taste, if only because it gives a - dare I say it - first taste of what's to follow, Lamb To The Slaughter, which includes the curiously homicidal Mary Maloney, Galloping Foxley, for the masterful use of a somewhat minimalistic plot to create such an intriguing story, Parson's Pleasure, for an ending left in so many ways to the reader's imagination and Royal Jelly, for being everything one can hope for in a Dahl story.

The flaws are few and far between. Some of the endings hover slightly too far on the ambiguous side, while some are perhaps made too obvious (such as Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat). Others perhaps feel a little anti-climactic (Edward the Conqueror, or maybe I'm missing something with that one).

This book is a very fine collection of short stories. Each story is a little gem, each one the product of an ingenious imagination.