I knew Roald Dahl mostly from all his amazing children's books, but if this guy has a second talent then it is the short story.
And in particular, the bizarre and the macabre type of short story. This collection, first published in nineteen-sixty (though some individual stories had previously been published in The New Yorker), seems to mostly be about the dynamic between two partners in a relationship. Since it was the end of the fifties, that means mainly a man and woman in a marriage. And it seemed a recurring theme that one of them would get a gleefully sadistic sort of revenge on the other. Often feeling like a rebellion against the institution of marriage. A way of coping with the social taboo on divorce and the forced co-existence with a human being you might grow to hate over the decades (or always disliked).
Now that sounds awful on the surface, except that Roald Dahl's intuition for tension is sublime. After a few paragraphs into a new story I start sensing the different ingredients at play and I know it's going to turn shockingly vile or almost evil near the end, sometimes with the punchline only in the last paragraph, and in the meanwhile I'm hooked and can't put it down.
I read collections of short stories regularly and there are always some stories that just don't really connect with me, while others can be some of the best you've ever read. That contrast in a single bundle isn't too uncommon. But in Kiss Kiss there was not a single story that bored me, allowed me to be distracted, or didn't have an expertly paced and ruthlessly effective plot.
I read a beautiful edition from the sixties by Penguin that I found in The Book Exchange here in Amsterdam. Appended below is the cover, which reminds me of the Nerdwriter's video on the art of sci-fi book covers.
