Book Recomendation: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More by Roald Dahl
Have you heard of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Or Matilda? Or the recent movie The BFG? It doesn't matter if you know these titles because of having watched the movie or read the book because these wonderful stories were created by the same person and he is ROALD DAHL!!! One of my favourite authors of all time!
Let me tell you something about this legend first. Roald Dahl (1916 - 1990) was born in Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales. Technically, he was a British author. However, he had also (awesome alert!) served in the WWII as a fighter pilot. He reminds me of Antoine de Saint-Exupery (Author of Le Petit Prince), who was also an author and a fighter pilot.
In 2002, one of the Cardiff landmarks was renamed 'Roald Dahl Square'. Just admit it, how many authors get to have a square dedicated for him? And I, personally, was lucky to be able to pay a visit to this special place when I was studying in Cardiff.
Roald Dahl Square
Furthermore, there is a day dedicated for Dahl too! To be exact, there are 13 days left to the actual Roald Dahl Day!!!
An irrelevant picture but I just want to show you how happy I was after my trip to RDS.
After the brief introduction of the author, I would like to recommend this book I, personally, enjoyed reading very much to you:
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (TWSOHS)
From the title itself, the book is undoubtedly wonderful. Just like his other books, Dahl, in this book, influenced his reader through his amusing and heart-warming writing style. Although Dahl was famous for writing children books, TWSOHS was different; it doesn't mean that the book is not suitable for young readers, but it certainly focuses more on adult readers.
TWSOHS is a collection of seven short stories, including both fiction and non-fiction. Here, I will list them out and discuss them separately.
1. The Boy Who Talked With Animals
This one is a super simple story but Dahl managed to stretch it to 23 pages. Basically, it's an easy read. One could learn nothing from this story except that human should stop destroying sea-life.
In this story, the narrator (Dahl, I assumed) was having a holiday in Jamaica. During his stay in a hotel, a giant turtle was caught by the local fishermen and had been sold to the hotel the narrator stayed in. However, a boy pleaded over and over again for the turtle to be released. At last, the fishermen and the hotel manager agreed to let it go. On the next day, the boy mysteriously went missing.
2. The Hitch-hiker
Although this story is another fictitious one created by Dahl, he never fails to make it so vivid for his readers. And yes, this is one of my favourite stories in this book. That's the thing about Dahl. His stories had always been given simple titles but his plot is original and it contains a lot of plot-twists that make the story so interesting!
In The Hitch-hiker, narrator was driving his new BMW to London and on the way, he decided to give a hitch-hiker a ride. This hitch-hiker has a particular talent and he described himself as a “fingersmith”. Little did the narrator knows, in truth, the hitch-hiker is just really good in pickpocketing. During the car journey, the hitch-hiker challenged the narrator to reach his new car's top speed. However, they were stopped by the police for exceeding the speed limit. And here comes the interesting part where the hitch-hiker helps the narrator to get away from his "crime"
3. The Mildenhall Treasure
This story is one of the only two non-fiction stories Dahl has ever wrote. It's about how a man (second left) dug up the Roman Silver in the land of England. However, the treasure was 'wrongfully kept' by the man's employer (most left). To be honest, this story is not particularly interesting and I actually got slow in getting pass this story. I guess, the moral of this story is about, greed, in the end, fails even the greedy. He who wants everything will lose anything in anytime.
The Roman Silver
4. The Swan
The fourth story is about an intelligent boy who fell to be a victim of two bullies who were curing their boredom on a weekend. Everything the bullies did to the victim was so awful and disturbing, which includes: tying the intelligent child on the track to be ran over by the train, killing a swan and asking the victim to jump down from a fifty-feet tree.
This story showed a lot of violence in the context of family and school.
"'Now, Albert,' his wife said, looking up from the sink, 'That's not nice, shootin' little birds in the nestin' season. I don't mind rabbits, but little birds in the nestin' season is another thing altogether.'
'Shut your mouth,' the father said. 'Nobody's askin' your opinion'"
--- Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six Other
Dahl exposed that, it is not uncommon that there is no respect between husband and wife in most of the British families; in fact, most of the father figure plays superiority. Furthermore, in The Swan, Dahl hinted that, parents do play an important role in children's growth.
5. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
This story is the longest one in this book. Henry is just another frivolous wealthy man, after inheriting his father's wealth. Until one day, in his friend's library, he discovered a blue notebook, titled: A Report on An Interview with Imhrat Khan, The Man Who Could See Without His Eyes. After reading it, Sugar was inspired by Imhrat Khan to achieve this ability so that he can earn more money by playing cards in the casino. Funnily, part of the story is about yoga as it is required to achieve such ability. However, mainly, the story is more about self-discovery. In this story, Sugar taught us his determination, persistence, patience, self-discipline and kindness. He may be a man of no importance in the beginning, but he died being a useful one.
This is my favourite story amongst all in the book. First of all, I truly believe the ability of seeing without using eyes. My boyfriend was trained to achieve this ability when he was younger. Not that I have witnessed it, his mother told me that, he could read a book aloud even his eyes were covered with a cloth. However, he always complained that he felt extremely tired after doing such a 'trick'. Now that he has grown up, he no longer retains the power to do so. Plus, after I've read this story, I realised, such talent is not impossible to acquire.
6. Lucky Break
The sixth piece is a short autobiography of Dahl, outlining his early school days and war experiences. During his school days, Dahl's way of describing his masters (teachers) and brutal beatings gave me a whole new perspective of English public school, because it is just as bad as American schools. Speaking of school teachers, I would love to have Dahl' Mrs O'Connor too as my literature teacher. She makes English literature so much more interesting!
Besides that, Dahl shared with us the joy of being a writer and how he developed his intention to become a writer. Just before he became a writer, he was a fighter pilot in the war, as I mentioned above. When the war was close to an end, he was sent to Washington DC as Assistant Air Attache and the famous writer C.S. Forrester approached him to request Dahl to write about his life as a war veteran. That was the turning point of Dahl's life. Ever since, his stories attracted Walt Disney and the then President of the States, Franklin Roosevelt and his family. He had a very close friendship with the then President too.
The chair Dahl sat on while he was writing
To be frank, I was surprised that Dahl was such a close friend to Franklin Roosevelt. To get an invitation to dine at the White House, Dahl's story must be very impressive, don't you agree?
7. A Piece of Cake
The last story is Dahl's first ever published story. It is about Dahl's personal crash-landing experience in Libya. I didn't comprehend most of the story so I didn't really like it.
Conclusion
Overall, I never regretted in picking up this read. I've always loved Dahl and after reading this, I love him even more because his stories are so entertaining! Dahl's stories always have a wonderful effect on me, not excluding this one. I hope that this post does spark up your interest in picking up this book!
Enjoy reading!
Rating: ★★★★★
***Press into picture for source/credit
