Book Review: The wonderful story of Henry Sugar and Six More

This is a book of short stories by Roald Dahl.  I must admit, “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” is not my favorite.  Most of these stories are fiction.  However three are based on real stories, two autobiographical.  These are “Lucky Break” and “A Piece of Cake”.  In “Lucky Break” Dahl tells of how he became an author.  His first work was “A Piece of Cake” which is his first story, and was a story of his experience flying for the RAP in WWII.   I find the story of how Dahl became an author fascinating.  He says he hardly never writes nonfiction.  However the times he does I have enjoyed very much.  The process of writing has always intrigued me, and Dahl gives some insight into his own writing process.  The other nonfiction story in this work is “The Mildenhall Treasure”.  This book talks about greed, and ancient artifacts.  A man hired to plow a field, comes on ancient Roman artifacts.  In England the law is such that if you find old treasure, you report it properly, half of the value is yours.  In this case, the owner of the field tried to swindle the finder by keeping the find secret.  However he was found out, and in the end received nothing.  The finder got a little, but not as much as he would have.  He didn’t know the law, and was in essence a victim of deceit.  I love stories about old artifacts and treasure.  In this case they found a stash of old dishes, silver spoons and ladles and such.  Many had intricate designs.  The old man’s fault was displaying a couple spoons, when an archeologist came to examine his collection of arrow heads and such.  The game was shortly up, and the items made known. 

This collection also included a couple fantastical stories.  I did not find them as enjoyable.  Henry Sugar takes years to train his mind to see the back of cards.  He has the idea of breaking the Casinos.  However when he masters the skill, he doesn’t have the desire to do this anymore.  He instead makes money from casinos, traveling the world, but always giving the money to his foundation which supports orphanages throughout the world.  There is a boy who talks to animals, and runs away with a sea turtle, and lastly a boy who flies away from trouble using the wings of a swan.  This is the most disturbing story, as he is bullied miserably, and the bullies never get theirs.  I kept wishing someone would slap them silly and it never happened.