this entry made me cry. i love henry sugar that much. to know there was a possibility of escaping the world with a turtle...Roald Dahl was a very large part of my childhood. A few years ago i read the entire book out loud to my best friend, rediscovering the awesomeness for myself as we went along. then i created this cocktail:
The Henry Sugar:
2 parts Bombay Sapphire
1 part lime-flavored authentic wormwood absinthe (to see without your eyes)
generous portions of club soda and lime grenadine
serve in a teardrop tumbler with a sugar-lined rim
PS: I am saving up to buy your book! for the moment i need to eat and re-read Henry Sugar, but soon my hard earned dollars will be flowing your way. i think i'll order it from my local bookstore, and hopefully they'll order more copies!
I adored "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar" when I read it as a 10-year-old. My favorite moment was the morning after he’d broken the bank at his first casino — and realized that having mastered this power to cheat at cards, he no longer had any interest in doing so. So he starts throwing his winnings off his balcony...
I wish I hadn't read this, or his other adult stories as a child. Things like The Swan, and a story in another book about the guy murdered for his skin, haunt me to this day.
As an adult I might have more perspective and less sensitivity to that stuff--Oh, who am I kidding. I still don't watch horror movies.
Do any of these stories involve a boy, at some point in the story, collecting discarded cigarette butts from the side of the road to create a giant cigarette for the Statue of Liberty to smoke?
Hmm, how much more insane could that sound? I could swear it was in a Dahl story that I read pre-10yo, but I've yet to come across it again. Help?
Suggestion suggestion for next FINE LINES: can we look at Eva Ibbotson? I sort of think of her as the mirror image of Roald Dahl - her books are magical, delightful and positive almost in the opposite ways that Dahl's are magical, subversive and oftentimes twisted.
I went through a major Roald Dahl phase in 4th or 5th grade and convinced my parents to buy me all of his books. I'll admit this one and Switch Bitch surprised me after all the others, though you can certainly see strains of it in his children's books. Thinking about The BFG now almost freaks me out, not sure how I adored it so much as a kid!
@stacyinbean: I've recently been rereading a lot of my Dahl, and let me just say, a lot of it freaks me out in ways I could never have understood as a child. I'm not sure what it is exaclty (maybe the way he describes people?), but it's both wonderful and terrifying.
Needless to say, my future children will certainly be getting all my old Dahl books. They do something to your childhood perspective that, looking back, was really valuable.
When I was in fifth grade this was THE book to read. Almost every girl in the class did a book report on it at some point, including one who made a pop-up book with scenes from the novel. Now the only things I really remember about it were all of Molly's nosebleeds and how her mother attributed them to her being an "adolescent," and when Meg and Molly draw a chalk line across their room.
Ben and Maria were my model for what I wanted my marriage and subsequent domestic life to be like. Ben was my template for a husband in 6th grade.
The part when Meg comes over, weeping, and passes on that Molly asked that the baby not come until she's home from the hospital, then Ben passes on the message via shouting through Maria's belly and says, "Maria and I are determined to have an obedient kid" -- that, to me, was everything I wanted in a husband during a difficult situation.
This has got to be my favorite YA book ever. And I usually tended to read horror novels. I bought a used library copy last summer and re-read it, and it's still just as good as the first time. I adored Ben and Maria. I think I wanted to be a hippy for the longest time because of them.
I absolutely agree with your assessment of death in YA lit, Lizzie, but I would like to point out what my copy of the book has under the author's bio:
"Though the book is not autobiographical, facing the death of her only sister when she was young made it possible for [Lois Lowry] to write about the subject with a good deal of understanding."
When I read that last time (I don't believe my original copy of the novel had such an in-depth author bio), I was completely unsurprised. Compared to, say, a Lurlene McDaniel death novel, this book is amazing.
The image that sticks with me the most from A Summer to Die is an ill Molly lying on a sofa in the kitchen. I dream of having a sofa in my kitchen for just such a purpose. The painted eggs and the lawyer in the hippie's wedding photos have stuck in my mind as well.
oooh I just got back from Barnes and Noble and Shelf Discovery is very prominently displayed on their new paperbacks table, which made me unnecessarily over-excited.
Is this the book in which the dying girl gets a nosebleed and her sister wakes up and there's blood all over the wall and the bed? Because I read that book a few times and that was a vivid passage.
Oh, man. I actually just re-read this not so long ago and was thrilled that it's as wonderful as I remember it being.
Yes, the characters are much more mature than normal YA characters, but in a very true way. I love that although Meg feels an inadequacy when comparing herself with her sister, it's not in a way that makes her envious of being beautiful for the sake of being more visible....instead she's envious of the way being beautiful sort of makes life easier for a while.
08/15/09
08/14/09
The Henry Sugar:
2 parts Bombay Sapphire
1 part lime-flavored authentic wormwood absinthe (to see without your eyes)
generous portions of club soda and lime grenadine
serve in a teardrop tumbler with a sugar-lined rim
PS: I am saving up to buy your book! for the moment i need to eat and re-read Henry Sugar, but soon my hard earned dollars will be flowing your way. i think i'll order it from my local bookstore, and hopefully they'll order more copies!
08/14/09
08/14/09
As an adult I might have more perspective and less sensitivity to that stuff--Oh, who am I kidding. I still don't watch horror movies.
08/14/09
Hmm, how much more insane could that sound? I could swear it was in a Dahl story that I read pre-10yo, but I've yet to come across it again. Help?
08/14/09
Suggestion suggestion for next FINE LINES: can we look at Eva Ibbotson? I sort of think of her as the mirror image of Roald Dahl - her books are magical, delightful and positive almost in the opposite ways that Dahl's are magical, subversive and oftentimes twisted.
08/14/09
08/15/09
Needless to say, my future children will certainly be getting all my old Dahl books. They do something to your childhood perspective that, looking back, was really valuable.
08/14/09
*scampers off to check it out from the library*
07/31/09
07/31/09
The part when Meg comes over, weeping, and passes on that Molly asked that the baby not come until she's home from the hospital, then Ben passes on the message via shouting through Maria's belly and says, "Maria and I are determined to have an obedient kid" -- that, to me, was everything I wanted in a husband during a difficult situation.
(And I'm happy to say I found him.)
07/31/09
I absolutely agree with your assessment of death in YA lit, Lizzie, but I would like to point out what my copy of the book has under the author's bio:
"Though the book is not autobiographical, facing the death of her only sister when she was young made it possible for [Lois Lowry] to write about the subject with a good deal of understanding."
When I read that last time (I don't believe my original copy of the novel had such an in-depth author bio), I was completely unsurprised. Compared to, say, a Lurlene McDaniel death novel, this book is amazing.
08/01/09
07/31/09
07/31/09
07/31/09
07/31/09
07/31/09
Yes, the characters are much more mature than normal YA characters, but in a very true way. I love that although Meg feels an inadequacy when comparing herself with her sister, it's not in a way that makes her envious of being beautiful for the sake of being more visible....instead she's envious of the way being beautiful sort of makes life easier for a while.