Completely Unexpected Tales: Tales of the Unexpected / More Tales of the Unexpected - Roald Dahl

I discovered "Tales of The Unexpected" after watching the repeated episodes on Cable television. I then purchased the books and have been hooked ever since. I have to admit that I am unmoved by most other fiction and so the fact that these short stories by Roald Dahl have been able to captivate my attention for so long is extraordinary. The thing I like most of all is the surreality of the stories; they are about ordinary people who appear to live normal lives but there is always something bubbling under the surface. They are so bizarre and throw the mind back to a state of defamiliarisation where we don't know where we are. I tended to forget that ...  Read the complete review

In my youth I vividly recall being petrified by the television programme Tales of the Unexpected. Even the theme music was enough to send me flying from the room in tears. The few I did manage watch gave me nightmares and I avoided it from then on. For the record I have recently watched some of the re-runs on Sky and for obvious reasons wondered what I made all of that fuss about. A child's imagination is a wonderful thing (sometimes). I was bought a book of these stories entitled "The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl" by my boyfirend who had picked it up from a book fair. I belive that the stories were originally published as a number of ...  Read the complete review

You must remember that old TV programme ‘Tales Of The Unexpected, (well, if you’re as old as I am anyway). I certainly do. My mother and father, grandmother and grandfather, aunt and uncle had a habit of taking a night away from us children and heading off to the pub, leaving four nine and ten year olds in the charge of our older cousin. We got a Mars Bar or two, a king-size packet of Marks and Spencer’s crisps, several large bottles of coke and stern warnings to ‘be good for Stephen’. What did we do with that relative freedom? We watched television that’s what. As I remember the schedule went ‘That’s ...  Read the complete review