Little Children Smell of Poo and Should be Viped Out (The Witches - Roald Dahl)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	The Witches - Roald Dahl
Date:	21/01/05 (6565 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Classic children's story, Quentin Blake's illustrations, Dark humour

Disadvantages: May be too dark for some children

If there’s one thing I loved doing as a child it was reading. If there’s one author whose books I loved to read it was Roald Dahl. Born in 1916 to Norwegian parents, Dahl was to become one of the most iconic writers of children’s stories of our time. Dahl died in 1990 after a long list of literary achievements. Famed for “James and the Giant Peach”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator” to name but a few of his books, “The Witches” won the Whitbread Award in 1983. On one rather dull evening in Oxford, I sat down to read it…

“In fairy- tales, witches always wear silly black hats and black cloaks, and they ride on broomsticks….REAL WITCHES dress in ordinary clothes and look like ordinary women. They live in ordinary houses and they work in ORDINARY JOBS”. Remember this, dear reader, as our story unfolds. “The Witches” is the story of a little boy and his grandmother from Norway. At the age of 7, the boy loses his parents in a tragic car accident and he comes to be cared for by his grandmother. Grandmamma sits in a chair and smokes cigars; she loves her grandson and is an expert on witches. Both Grandmamma and grandson love Norway but by the terms of the parent’s will, the boy must be educated in England. After a bath, one night, grandmamma proceeds to tell her grandson how to recognise a witch. Bald with long finger-nails and no toes, it appears that witches can detect children from their cleanliness. By default, by being dirty it is possible to avoid the sensory enhanced nostrils of the witch. This description comes in handy one day as the little boy finds himself in an encounter with a real, live witch at the bottom of the garden. By taking evasive action and clambering up a tree, the witch is eventually avoided but our hero soon realises that this is not the only witch around.

One day Grandmamma gets ill. After a scare, both are despatched to the Hotel Magnificent in Bournemouth on doctor’s orders for bracing sea air and recuperation. It’s here that our hero encounters what he thinks is a meeting of the NSPCC whilst chasing after his pet mice only to realise that he has stumbled upon a meeting of all the witches in England. Trapped at the back of the meeting room, he finds himself listening to the Grand High Witch and her dastardly plot to kill every child in the land. As little boys smell of poo to witches, he gets discovered, captured and turned into a mouse by The Grand High Witch. Despite this, he does escape and so the reader is left to ponder whether the evil witches’ dastardly plot can be scuppered or whether every child in England will fall victim to the glove and hat wearing evil conglomerate of witches.

The Witches is a spellbinding story and most unusual. Throughout, it is told from the perspective of the little boy in the first person although at no stage do we get to know either his name or his grandmother’s. Aimed predominantly at children, Dahl uses a simplistic approach in expression and story telling that simply adds to the charm and reels the reader in. His penchant for creating larger than life characters is typified through both the cigar puffing, geriatric Norwegian grandmother and the Angelica Huston-esque Grand High Witch who sounds like a throw back to the worst of German comic impressions from years gone by. Maybe even some might be offended by such mock imitation such as “So now I am having a plan! I am having a giganticus plan for getting rrid of every child in Inkland!” Of course, the fact that I interpret this as imitation German could be way off beam as at no time is any nationality referred to other than Norway featuring heavily so maybe I’ve jumped to the wrong conclusion after all. If you have seen the movie “The Witches” with Angelica Huston, Rowan Atkinson et al then it’s hard not to imagine them playing the different roles. As to whether that’s good or bad will depend on whether you enjoyed the film, book, both or neither.

Dahl’s interpretation of what a witch would look like is both dark and humorous and so typically Dahl. Always bald with long fingernails, we soon come to discover that witches wear hats and gloves and our hero’s realisation that the meeting of the NSPCC is wholly attended by hat and glove wearing women is a triumph of timing and description. The ridiculously outlandish plot to kill the children is bizarre and surreal and one to savour when you encounter it in the book. It’s that aspect of dark humour that is so attractive about Dahl’s writing making him appeal to young and old alike. Whilst in the middle of the convention, one of the attendees dares to speak out against The Grand High Witch and is quickly reduced to a burnt crisp as we are re-assured that the Grand High Witch likes to fry at least one witch during a meeting to keep the others in line!

You can’t help but warm to the associations of Dahl’s mind as he comes up with the most adventurous of sequences, added to by the spoiled, gluttonous Bruno Jenkins who also ends up as a mouse although I seem to recall the ending of the movie being slightly happier than that in the book suggesting the usual artistic license on behalf of filmmakers.

The Witches is not a long book by any means and at 208 pages is rather short. Chapters are typically a dozen pages or so and it’s hard not to want to know what’s coming next. On reflection, I think it only took me just over a couple of hours to read but, of course, it reads so much better if you can read it to an attentive child. My paperback copy has illustrations throughout by the famous Quentin Blake that added to the effect. Having read so much Dahl as a child, I have the fondest memories of "Charlie and The Chocolate Factory" and other stories that transported me into a world of fiction and make believe. Compared to other Dahl children’s stories, I wouldn’t rate “The Witches” as one of my favourites. This is simply because I prefer some of the other Dahl stories I've read. Compared to other mere mortals then the same book is a classical work that stands amongst the best of children’s books. How can I do anything else but strongly recommend that you take in a Dahl book like this from time to time or better still, make sure your children get to know the genius that was Roald Dahl?

Thanks for reading

Marandina

ISBN 0-14-031730-9
Published by Puffin books
RRP for this in the UK is £4.99 although a trip to Amazon will reveal used copies for 99p.

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