Sunday 22 November 2009

Matilda. By Roald Dahl

Matilda

Roald Dahl

Puffin Books
First Published 1988


A book for children, enjoyable. About a child (five and a half years old) prodigy, Matilda, who is completely neglected by her parents, terrorised by the headmistress at school, but loved by her class teacher, a lovely young woman, who, like the rest of the school, is also terrified of the HM. Matilda discovers magical powers and uses these to restore to the classteacher her rightful inheritance, which the HM, revealed to be the classteacher's aunt, has stolen from her. As with all Roald Dahl, there are scenes which are just not right (e.g. Matilda get her own back on her father by supergluing his hat on to his head), and scenes which you want read again and again (e.g. when the class teacher discovers Matilda's genius). In one of the early chapters Dahl gives the following list of books that Matlida reads, obviously approved by him. Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Tess of d'Ubervilles (!), Gone to earth (by Mary Webb), Kim, The Invisible Man, The Old Man and the Sea, The Sound and the Fury, The Grapes of Wrath, The Good Companions, Brighton Rock and Animal Farm. I have read almost all of these, and find Dahl's choice of great works coinciding with mine. The ones I have not read are Gone to Earth, The Sound and the Fury, and Brighton Rock.

Two quotes. The first one a limerick written by Matilda

The thing we all ask about Jenny
Is 'Surely there cannot be many
Young girls in the place
With so lovely a face?'
The answer to that is 'Not any!'

Another is quote by Dahl of some lines from a poem (In Country Sleep) by Dylan Thomas.

Never and never, my girl riding far and near
In the land of the hearthstone tales, and spelled asleep,
Fear or believe that the wolf in a sleepwhite hood
Loping and bleating roughly and blithely shall leap,
My dear, my dear
Out of a lair in the flocked leaves in the dew dipped year
To eat your heart in the house in the rosy wood.
There are two more stanzas as well, but more about these poems when I read them.

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