This collection of Roald Dahl stories strangely unlike any other. Even the title seems a little strange because it can be read in two different ways. Firstly, it can be read exactly as it what it is: “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” along six more stories accompanying. But since there are no quotation marks setting off and indicating that it is a book which contains this one story and six others it can also be interpreted as the “wonderful” story about a guy name Henry Sugar…and six more stories which are also “wonderful.”
The entire reading experience of this volume is equally unsettled and confusing. The short story collection Kiss Kiss is mostly about the grotesqueries of adult relationships and therefore the title makes sense. Those collections which promise to be Tales of the Unexpected deliver exactly as promised. Switch Bitch and Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life have titles that aren’t particularly helpful, but each is self-contained in its content: fictional short stories. By contrast, this is a collection of Dahl’s work which contains two short stories that seem directed especially to tweens or teens, two stories that would be much more comfortable alongside Dahl’s other stories geared for older readers, a true historical written as a short story complete with made-up dialogue, an essay of sorts giving advice on how to become a writer and a complete rewrite of an earlier autobiographical account of Dahl’s World War II crash as the pilot of a fighter plane.
The title is absolute appropriate in its vagueness as it does contain an extended work of fiction titled “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” along with six more self-contained literary works. The problem is why go that particular route when titling the collection. It is not the only collection in the Dahl canon in which one particular story also serves as the title for the entire volume, but that particular choice does not dominate the canon. If any collection seems worthy of being given a unique title separate from any particular entry within, it would seem to be this eclectic mix of fact and fiction, kids and adults, history and pure imagination. The one thing which ties them all together is that they represent a wonderful demonstration Dahl’s versatility. One is almost moved to describe the book, in fact, as a story about Henry Sugar and six more wonderful tales by Roald Dahl.
