"Someone Like You"

“Someone Like You”
Written by Roald Dahl
Review written by Diana Iozzia

“Someone Like You” is a collection of short stories that are comical, dark, and sinister. When I stumbled across this collection, I was excited to see how Roald Dahl’s writing would be for adults, and I wasn’t disappointed. Funnily enough, I recognized some of the short stories from the television program, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

The stories in this collection include:
“Taste”
“Lamb to the Slaughter”
“Man from the South”
“The Soldier”
“My Lady Love, My Dove”
“Dip in the Pool”
“Galloping Foxley”
“Skin”
“Poison”
“The Wish”
“Neck”
“The Sound Machine”
“Nunc Dimittis”
“The Great Automatic Grammatizator”
“Claud’s Dog” novella

My favorites in this collection are: “Taste”, “Skin”, “Neck” and “The Sound Machine”. “Taste” follows a man who believes he can identify any bottle of wine, who makes a bet with his friend / enemy who bets a prize he doesn’t want to lose. “Skin” follows a man who has an up and coming artist tattoo a beautiful and astonishing painting onto his back. “Neck” follows a man who stays as a guest of two very strange people in the countryside. “The Sound Machine” follows a man who creates a fantastic machine that can observe the sounds that plants and trees make. As a personal fan of short story collections, I thoroughly enjoyed this. The stories have great narration, quirky characters, and lots of twists and turns. This is exactly what I was hoping for and more.