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Boy: Tales of Childhood *
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- Roald Dahl
- memoir
- Boy: Tales of childhood is a book by Roald Dahl as the name suggests about stories from his childhood, teenage, and up to the age of 18. It is not an autobiography as Roald Dahl himself points out, but rather the collection of interesting events that occurred in Roald's childhood. The Hero of these numerous stories is not Roald Dahl, its his mother and father that steal the spotlight in this book, except a few times which I'll get to later.
Roald's father Harald Dahl was a Norwegian who after running away from home, along with his brother Oscar, worked his way to France on a Cargo Ship(A Fact i really liked). Harald and his brother had decided that a small town (Sarpsborg) in a small country like Norway was no place to make a fortune. All though they were very close, they parted ways in Paris because they wanted to be independent of each other. Before reading further go and read the first chapter "Papa and Mama".
The second yet leading hero of this book Roald's mother, Sofie, after her husband, Roald's father, Harald had died, raised 4 children of her own and 2 from Harald's earlier marriage, 6 in total, in a foreign country. She looked after them all and each year they took a vacation to Norway to a small island called Tjome, she managed everyone's luggage, tickets, moods, tantrums and so on.
His father and mother had a strong insistence on Education. That's something to takeaway.
I was kinda disappointed with Roald himself because he wrote a lot about bullies and horrible teachers and how they made his life difficult, but i did not read much about Roald standing up for himself and fighting back these teachers and bullies with a strong ferocity, i was really expecting that. Other than that the vivid descriptions of summers in Norway, life in the early 1920's, mischievous schemes, his interests and hobbies, his relationship with his family and his mother in particular, sliced noses and doctors with scalpels, his mind as a boy, are something worth spending time reading.
The last few chapters is when Roald Dahl truly begins to emerge from his chrysalis as he is coming of age, the book left me really excited for the sequel "Going Solo".
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