Customer Reviews

Kiss Kiss

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Too bad Dahl's short story collections are so hard to find; he was one of the best, right up there with Saki and O. Henry. This early collection has a few really delicious tales, particularly "Parson's Pleasure" and "The Landlady," and one about a baby that gets fed some sort of special food and gradually turns into a giant bee -- just the kind of thing only Dahl could pull off. This collection is worth tracking down, especially if you are a Dahl fan.

There's a quiet zaniness that runs through the lot of these stories. Most of them are crisp, surprising and smoothly written at every turn. "The Way up to Heaven," "Parson's Pleasure," "Genesis and Catastrophe" and "Pig" delivered the best twists and overall fun for my tastes. Great literary and psychological foreplay.

It's no wonder "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "The BFG" and even "Matilda" are thrillingly outrageous stories, because the short pieces in "Kiss Kiss" also display Roald Dahl's macabre and unexpected thoughts. In this case he weaves them around seemingly real-life situations. "Georgy Porgy" is particularly disturbing as George ends up getting drunk and then going mad when he feels he's conquered his fear of women, while "Royal Jelly" shows Albert Taylor turning his baby daughter into a big human bee like himself. Then there's the birth of Adolf Hitler in "Genesis and Catastrophe" and his mother wanting him to live after the deaths of her three previous children - and the whole world knows what he did during the Second World War - while "Edward the Conqueror" shows Edward obstinately refusing to believe that the cat Louisa discovers is a reincarnation of Franz Liszt...before throwing the creature in the fire. In "Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat" it is clear that Mr. Bixby found out that the mink coat his wife pawned was given to her (by the Colonel) and he punished her by secretly giving it to Miss Pulteney, while in "Pig", vegetarian Lexington becomes a tragic hero by eating a piece of pork and then meeting a death in the packing-house as horribly cruel as it is for pigs. But my favourite story is "William and Mary". It is unnerving in that Mary is appalled by the idea of William's brain being kept alive, together with one of his eyes, after he dies, but when she goes to the hospital to see the conclusion of this experiment, she likes the sight of William's brain immersed in Ringer's Solution with the eye glaring at her, and is adamant about bringing "him" home with her. The experiment itself is also unnerving, as is the short film that Landy watches showing the Russian dog's head licking away food and watching people that gives him the idea for the experiment. It just goes to show you how imaginative, how remarkable and how successful Dahl was as far as all age groups are concerned during his writing career, and that even his adult stories are as macabre as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" etc. Truly masterful.

This book was great! I haven't read Roald Dahl's other adult books, but they're probably just as good. It's a collection of short stories with a twist at the end. My favorite would be Georgy Porgy, if I remember the spelling correctly. That ending was so twisted, I'm still trying to figure it out. Anyways, I recommend this book to people who love weird stories. Hope you enjoy.

This is my favorite collection of Roald Dahl stories. Regrettably I bought my copy while traveling. As the idea of adding the weight of books to my increasingly large pack became less and less appealing I opted to give my copy away. I now wish I owned a copy of this. I consider it his better collection of macabre stories.

The order was received in a timely manner and was packaged with care. the book itself is in great condition. thank you!