Finding out that revered children's author Roald Dahl also penned this collection of misogynistic short stories that are clearly malevolently bitter about women is as shocking as discovering that your strait-laced Great Aunt Minnie used to dance on tables in her early twenties. The two sides of one personality seem to diametrically opposed to each other that it is hard to recognize the creator of Charlie Bucket in the woman-hating narrative that permeates each of the four shorts stories in this collection.
Critics were similarly confused, and also rather unimpressed. The nicest remark about the publication was that it was a simple diversion from everyday life. Others disliked the over-arching anti-women sentiment, the over-reliance on sexual imagery and the under-development of the characters who were almost a parody of themselves as their narrative continued.
The stories have more in common with the psychologically disturbing Tales of the Unexpected than they do with any of Dahl's other work, showing a distinct capacity for malevolence and creating characters that were just plain cruel to their innocent victims. This is not a nice book, and Dahl never meant it to be so. Still, its palpable hatred of women makes it rather difficult to read, and it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth in it's emotional distance and cruelty.
