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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 37, No 24. September 18, 1974

Someone Like You: Roald Dahl. Penguin Paperback. $1.35

Someone Like You: Roald Dahl. Penguin Paperback. $1.35.

Roald Dahl, whose short stories have only recently attracted New Zealand readers, possesses an extraordinary, comic imagination and a gift for creating tension and suspense. His easy, flowing style enables us to slip into the story with absolutely no effort at all, and before we know it we are caught up in a tale impossible to put down until the end. "Someone Like You" contains fifteen such tales, all very different yet similar in their art of enthralling. Many of his clever plots ileal with casual bets, which turn out to be not so casual. The stakes are high, e.g. a finger, a daughter, even ones own life, as is the case with Mr Botibal who leaps into the middle of the ocean in the hope of winning the ship's pool. Others are concerned with the deviousness and cunning of human nature. "May Lady Love, My Dove" is an example of this.

Here, one piece of trickery leads to the unveiling of another, which in its turn breeds more trickery, and so it goes on.....

Mr Dahl seems to delight in uncovering the less noble, but nonetheless amusing aspects of human character, especially in people whom you would expect to be the very embodiment of nobility, nobility itself, the wealthy, the social elite. We are shown that society is not always the comfortable place it might seem. It can be a source of great humiliation as Lionel the hero of "Nunc Dimitis" discovers. Undaunted however, he seeks revenge. His method is as cunning as it is cruel, but the way it exploits human vanity is most humorous and a light touch is retained by the ending in which the manipulator is himself manipulated, as the victim gives back as good as she gets — well, almost. By an unexpected little twist, both character and reader are caught unawares. These stories rarely end quite as we might expect, and here lies, I think, much of Roald Dahl's charm as a story teller: his ability to lead us on in one direction, then all of a sudden making a volte-face, leaving us a trifle shocked, greatly surprised and much amused.