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• (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)If you're anything like me, you mostly only know British author Roald Dahl through his deliciously dark children's tale <I>Charlie and the Chocolate Factory</i>, as well as maybe a handful of other Young Adult titles like <I>James and the Giant Peach</I>, <I>Matilda</I> and <I>The Witches</I>, all of which have been made into major Hollywood movies in recent years. But as this first-ever authorized biography from veteran journalist Donald Sturrock shows, both Dahl's life and career were a lot more dramatic and event-filled than that; a dashing and adventurous fighter pilot in WW2 Africa, he eventually married an Oscar-winning actress, developed the most notorious Disney Golden Age cartoon to never actually get produced, briefly hosted a "Twilight Zone"-style creepy television series, and had an entire career as a subversive adult author before turning to children's stories in middle-age, along the way incidentally co-inventing a new type of medical valve that would save thousands of lives, and co-inventing a new type of rehabilitative stroke therapy that's now the industry standard. And to the family's credit, this engrossing book doesn't shy away from the dark parts of Dahl's life either, despite it being endorsed by them; he was a fatally egotistical philanderer as well, a mean drunk who would often pick fights at dinner parties with strangers just to liven up the evening, who played hardball over royalties with a series of publishing companies and who famously declared in the '80s that Salman Rushdie deserved the Islamic <I>fatwa</I> that had been issued against him. But as this balanced look at a topsy-turvy life shows, Dahl was also charming, quietly generous with his time and money, and apparently truly amazing when it came to interacting with children, a passionate advocate of YA literature in his later years who helped legitimize that genre in the first place. A fascinating and surprise-filled bio, well worth your time if you've ever been a fan of any of his books.Out of 10: <B>9.4</B>

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  jasonpettus

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