Going Solo
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Do yourself a favor and don’t sleep on Roald Dahl. Most people know my man Dahl for his whimsical children’s books: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Gremlins, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The BFG, etc. A few years ago, I reviewed his collection of adult short stories: The Best of Roald Dahl. I liked it so much that I put it on my coveted top-picks list.
Dahl is a truly wild dude. He seems like he’s lived a thousand lives. Going Solo is an autobiography that covers only a portion of his early adult life: when he worked for Shell Oil in Africa and when he served as a pilot in the Royal Air Force during World War II. He really seems like he was always down for whatever. He acknowledges that his sense of invulnerability was reckless; most WWII Royal Air Force pilots died, but he left with *just* a skull fracture. Maybe that’s why he dreamed up the oompa loompas later on.
Throughout his stories, he includes excerpts of letters he wrote home to his mom at the time. He also posts a bunch of old photographs that look a million years old and some of his flight logs. I don’t know jackshit about flying, but it doesn’t matter because, as it turns out, he didn’t either. He volunteered for the Royal Air Force because he thought it was interesting, not because he had any experience. He had a confident sense of self, and that was enough.
His stories give me slight Catch-22 vibes-- talking about serious events with the nonchalance of someone who has actually lived through war and trauma firsthand. He’s not super flowery in his writing; he gives exactly the right amount of description, which is part of what makes him an incredible storyteller. I was straight up enthralled, so much so that I read the whole 180-page book in less than 24 hours (not gonna lie though, it had big font). Overall, Going Solo gets 5 out of 5 flames.
