Boy: Tales of Childhood

The advantage of going home is being able to grab old childhood novellas off the shelf and stuff them into a bookrace. In this case, Boy is quite a good book, a touching and darkly humorous collection of anecdotes about Dahl’s childhood in his massive Norwegian family in England, the tragedy of losing his sister and father in a less confident era of medicine, magical summers in the Oslofjord, and above all, English boarding schools. Dahl’s education was a nightmare of canings from cruel figures of authority, from the headmaster on down to prefects. Somehow, Dahl kept his natural contrary nature, taking pleasure in the little things like taste-testing chocolates (inspiration for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), sports, or photography. There’s a prelude to the future African adventurer and WW2 fighter pilot, but little that would make one think that this is the childhood of a beloved children’s author—except for the crystal clear quality of the reminiscences.