Wicked And Delicious: Devouring Roald Dahl

D.W. Gibson is the author of Not Working: People Talk About Losing a Job and Finding Their Way in Today’s Changing Economy.

The bright white Heritage Park library opened up a mile from my house when I was 13, and the first thing I checked out was Roald Dahl’s story collection Someone Like You. I should have known what I was in for because of that giant eyeball on the cover; but somehow I saw it as more of a temptation than a warning.

And I might have guessed by the title of the first story I read — “Lamb to the Slaughter” — that I was in for blood and death. Instead I anticipated something like the mouthwatering escape I’d had when my fifth-grade teacher assigned Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I had no reason to assume a teacher-approved writer would deliver anything but a fantastical children’s story.