Memories of Going Solo (Going Solo - Roald Dahl)

Member Name: Puggers

Product:	Going Solo - Roald Dahl
Date:	22/02/09 (186 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Brilliantly written, amusing and fascinating

Disadvantages: Not quite as charming as its predecessor

Roald Dahl was born in 1916 and passed away nearly twenty years ago, aged 74. The author of over a dozen children's books, numerous collections of short stories and a couple of wonderful compendiums of poetry, he also published his memoirs in two volumes, covering his life from early childhood to the age of twenty (Boy - see previous review!) and the years he spent working for Shell in East Africa and later fighting in the East Mediterranean in World War II. This is the latter of the two, and picks up right where Boy left off, with Dahl aboard a ship heading for the Suez Canal and beyond, to his ultimate destination of Dar Es Salaam, in what is now Tanzania.

Dahl is immediately on form, starting off the book with a series of anecdotes concerning his companions on this long voyage, a collection of Empire-building Colonialists whom Dahl describes as 'A rare species ... that most of you have never encountered and now you never will', with a language entirely of their own and temperaments ranging from the eccentric to the downright mad.

His journey takes him to a great house in Dar Es Salaam where he presides over a number of native servants - as with the aforementioned characters, the life he describes living in Tanzania is full of a plethora of aspects which were quite particular to the time, and have all but become extinct. Nonetheless, Dahl's writing whisks us back to a period in which an Englishman was expected to have natives performing all his menial tasks and it was considered quite improper for one's servants to learn any English. Dahl does not come across as an arrogant imperialist, however - he makes an effort to learn Swahili so as to communicate with them, and strikes up a lasting relationship with his helpers.

Through the vivid quality of his writing, Dahl brings Africa alive for us. The heat, the snakes and the people he encountered are all rendered fully and evocatively by the author's sharp, observant narrative. Dahl is not one to go in for excessive, over-flowery descriptions, and neither does he tend to exaggerate or over-dramatise his recollections. Instead, his skill lies in picking out the most fascinating and insightful parts of his extensive experiences, and relating them with measured, perfectly judged language. It is this ability to write clearly, succinctly but above all, in a manner which is delicious to read that makes Dahl's writing so popular with adults and children alike.

This volume is markedly different from its predecessor Boy in that it is less easy to make out the characters and moments that went on to inspire his much-loved children's fiction. Where Boy was full of odious, fearsome adults who quite clearly shaped the antagonists of his later books, Going Solo deals with a different kind of material; especially where he relates his time flying in the RAF in World War Two, these villainous caricatures are absent, replaced by a harder reality.

Dahl's stories here are no less entertaining, but he does not attempt to make light or draw comedy from the wartime he experienced. Rather, the author lays open his younger self's naive mindset and thought processes in a lightly self-deprecating manner which gives the narrative a faintly romantic, uplifting edge that sits well alongside the death and destruction the stories explore.

Dahl certainly has an impressive story to tell. As a pilot who fought in many air battles and survived incredibly unfavourable odds to come home alive and well, he lays down a story that, even in lesser hands, would be a stirring, fascinating one. In Dahl's wonderfully gifted possession, this is a stunning tale. It's not quite as enchanting as Boy, which really seemed to resonate with all the influences that would go on to make the author one of the greatest children's writers to lay pen to paper, and perhaps doesn't possess the same essential charm that made the former volume so easy to return to time and again. However, as both the recollections of a time now lost to history and the conclusion to the incredible life story of a remarkable man, Going Solo is a voyage all should take.

Summary: The second part of Roald Dahl's remarkable life story.