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Skin and Other Stories

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Stories to startle, surprise and satisfy...

How would you get rid of a murder weapon without causing suspicion?
Where would you hide a diamond where no one else would think of looking?
What if you found out the tattoo on your back was worth over a million pounds?
You will discover that just about anything is possible in a Roald Dahl story, and here are eleven of his very best.

The eleven stories in this volume are drawn from Dahl's popular adult short stories and were chosen for their quirky, twisted, and haunting plots – sure to please Dahl teenage fans.

Contents
Introduction (Skin and Other Stories) (2000) - Essay by Wendy Cooling
Skin (1952) - Non-genre Short Story
Lamb to the Slaughter (1953) - Non-genre Short Story
The Sound Machine (1949) - Short Story
An African Story (1946) - Short Story
Galloping Foxley (1953) - Non-genre Short Story
The Wish (1948) - Short Story
The Surgeon (1988) - Non-genre Novelette
Dip in the Pool (1952) - Non-genre Short Story
The Champion of the World (1959) - Non-genre Novelette
Beware of the Dog (1944) - Non-genre Short Story
My Lady Love, My Dove (1952) - Non-genre Short Story

224 pages, Paperback

First published February 3, 2000

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About the author

Roald Dahl

1,197 books25.7k followers
Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer and screenwriter of Norwegian descent, who rose to prominence in the 1940's with works for both children and adults, and became one of the world's bestselling authors.

Dahl's first published work, inspired by a meeting with C. S. Forester, was Shot Down Over Libya. Today the story is published as A Piece of Cake. The story, about his wartime adventures, was bought by the Saturday Evening Post for $900, and propelled him into a career as a writer. Its title was inspired by a highly inaccurate and sensationalized article about the crash that blinded him, which claimed he had been shot down instead of simply having to land because of low fuel.

His first children's book was The Gremlins, about mischievous little creatures that were part of RAF folklore. The book was commissioned by Walt Disney for a film that was never made, and published in 1943. Dahl went on to create some of the best-loved children's stories of the 20th century, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and James and the Giant Peach.

He also had a successful parallel career as the writer of macabre adult short stories, usually with a dark sense of humour and a surprise ending. Many were originally written for American magazines such as Ladies Home Journal, Harper's, Playboy and The New Yorker, then subsequently collected by Dahl into anthologies, gaining world-wide acclaim. Dahl wrote more than 60 short stories and they have appeared in numerous collections, some only being published in book form after his death. His stories also brought him three Edgar Awards: in 1954, for the collection Someone Like You; in 1959, for the story "The Landlady"; and in 1980, for the episode of Tales of the Unexpected based on "Skin".

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5 stars
2,761 (33%)
4 stars
3,274 (40%)
3 stars
1,718 (21%)
2 stars
329 (4%)
1 star
64 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 622 reviews
Profile Image for Mariah Roze.
1,056 reviews1,056 followers
May 20, 2017
My goal is to read as many Roald Dahl books as I can this year. Also, I am doing this as a buddy read with a Goodreads' friend that is also doing the same challenge.

This book is filled with eleven short stories that Roald Dahl wrote. They were all good, but none of them were fantastic. I had no drive to read this book. I was able to set it down and forget about it. Compared to Roald Dahl's other work, I don't believe this to be anywhere near his best stuff.
Profile Image for Dustin the wind Crazy little brown owl.
1,354 reviews170 followers
August 17, 2013
I'm a nasty person. And so are you - in a secret sort of way. That's why we get along together."

Wowzers! I loved this collection of short stories! From the author who brought us Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, Jame's Giant Peach, Matilda, The BFG (Big Friendly Giant) and more. This collection of stories was published after the death of Roald Dahl and brings together a perfectly wonderful batch of fun written for adults rather than children.

Within the pages of Skin are the answers to many of life's mysteries such as how to catch pheasants with raisins and where to look for early works of art by famous painters.

I absolutely loved SKIN and highly recommend it to all my twisted friends.
Profile Image for Kye Alfred Hillig.
169 reviews29 followers
January 20, 2010
Dahl shows his true colors in this incredible grouping of short stories. The man, as it turns out, is a sicko like the rest of us. His adult work is disturbing in a way that continues to rattle your cage while he laughs at us from beyond the grave. His brilliance and striking gift for plotting always comes around full-circle to slap you in the face. He is an unpretentious author who chooses always to be modest while remaining vivid. I am going to hold strong that his gift was not truly for children but instead for those of us who grew up to love him more.
Profile Image for Troy Blackford.
Author 23 books2,485 followers
August 26, 2016
It took me a number of years from the first time someone recommended Roald Dahl's adult, dark short fiction to me and the time I finally got one of his books and read it, but my word. This was one of the most engaging, unsettling, delightful, and unexpected works of short fiction I have ever encountered. I had no suspicion that Dahl had these kinds of works in his oeuvre, and now that I know, you can rest assured I will keep reading them. This was a literary treat. I was delighted at the mystery, the otherworldliness, the glee of creation, and the richness of character and situation I found in the covers of this book. Highly, highly recommended.
Profile Image for Javi Appreciates  Art.
79 reviews30 followers
August 15, 2021
3.5

Esta obra es la primera que leo de Roald Dahl.

Si bien muchos de los relatos me gustaron en mayor o menor medida, otros no me terminaron de convencer o cuyos desenlaces no me parecieron atractivos.

A pesar de que no esperaba nada terrorífico ni nada muy adulto, considero que el título "relatos escalofriantes" es bastante pretencioso para lo que realmente ocurre en las páginas de este libro.

Sin embargo, Dahl es un gran cuentista, y en esta obra se hace notar. Nos presenta situaciones cotidianas y personajes variopintos, con una historia detrás normalmente original y fuera de convencionalismos.

Unos relatos me gustaron muchísimo, otros no tanto y otros pocos nada o casi nada, pero mis favoritos fueron los siguientes:

- Tatuaje
- Cordero asado
- La máquina del sonido
- El deseo
- Apuestas
Profile Image for Stephen.
295 reviews6 followers
May 29, 2008
I actually received this book through a kind of secret santa/book exchange last holiday season. I was excited to receive it, though, as it was billed as Roald Dahl writes short stories for adults, which, I guess, is what it was.

I grew up on Dahl. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and The Great Glass Elevator, James and the Giant Peach, and The Witches were all staples of my early reading years, so I was excited to see what happened when this imagination was applied to some more mature themes.

Unfortunately, my answer is that it wasn't applied very well. The writing seemed weak and timid, although there were brief instances of brilliant imagery. Perhaps the biggest problem I had, though, is the structure of the stories.

It's as though Dahl wasn't quite certain of what to do with a short story. Tales of this nature typically involve introduction, conflict, action, and (sometimes) resolution. The majority of the stories in this collection, though, (I'd say 80%) hardly made it past the conflict stage. You met the characters, the plot line gets introduced, and then the story ends. The conflict is typically a twist of some sort, and ending the story on this twist just makes the story feel like a cliffhanger. The problem is that nothing feels resolved or even acted upon. It's like watching a play with three acts but they only show you Act I. The effect is ultimately disappointing.

The stories, although billed as "macabre," are simply more imaginative (and occasionally mildly sinister) than anything, and they do show a degree of promise, but in the end, they are lacking.
Profile Image for Kaethe.
6,500 reviews518 followers
July 8, 2014
I'm not a fan of the quiet literary novel. I like stories in which things happen. New, different, interesting things. Dahl is in my top five of short story writers along with Daphne DuMaurier who was also a Hitchcock fave, as well as three other people I'll have to think very carefully about. Guy de Maupassant and Edgar Allen Poe and Rod Serling come to mind immediately.
Profile Image for Takoneando entre libros.
764 reviews129 followers
February 10, 2019
Buenísima recopilación de Cuentos del autor. Lo he leído en una edición de Alfaguara juvenil, imagino que es un tipo de historias que es muy apta para esos jóvenes que aún no han llegado a la edad adulta, pero que han dejado atrás la niñez y necesitan otro tipo de historias.
Mención especial para el relato "Cordero asado", del que Alfred Hitchcock hizo un episodio de su serie y en el cual se basó Pedro Almodovar para una película.
Genial Roald.
Profile Image for Georgette.
171 reviews22 followers
Read
January 8, 2009
Beloved children author Roald Dahl wrote a series of delightful, dark humour for teen readers and eleven of them are compiled in Skin and Other Stories. [return][return]Dahl once said, "The success to a short story is simple, it must have a beginning, a middle and an end. The reader must never want to put it down."[return][return]There is no reason to put down this book too early. A single story, if not the entire book, is short enough to finish in one sitting.[return][return]Take for instance, the story "Skin", where an old man finds that the tattoo on his back is worth well over a million pounds because the one who did it for him is now a famous painter. He received offers for it but how do you sell something that's etched into your skin?[return][return]Creative murder is the theme for "Lamb to the Slaughter". Mary Maloney didn't take the news that her husband is dumping her ver well, so she kills him... with a frozen leg of lamb that the police never found. Although they did have a very nice dinner while at the scene of the crime.[return][return]In "The Sound Machine", a man named Klausner invents a most remarkable machine. It can detect the sound of plants crying. That's probably enough to make anyone seem mad.[return][return]And the whimsy continues - a child who decided that certain colours in the carpet will certainly eat him, a surgeon who received a diamond as a gift and has to hide it somewhere, and so on.[return][return]A few of these stories start with a lot of preface before it gets to the point, which is usually rather short and turns the entire story around. Oh, the characters here don't usually do the morally right thing. They do something unexpected, if not blatantly wrong.[return][return]One could say Dahl has a sick mind, but the rest of us would love the irony. After the first couple of stories, I found myself already anticipating what kind of twist of he has in store next.[return][return]Some younger children will need some of the stories here explained to them, but teens and adults should enjoy it just fine.[return][return](2006)
Profile Image for Nick.
225 reviews11 followers
October 14, 2021
My life divides itself into three periods: reading Roald Dahl myself as a kid, not reading Roald Dahl at all, and reading Roald Dahl to my kids. It's in the last period that I've come to the deepest appreciation of his books. Seeing your daughter cry with joy at the end of Matilda, or your son transfixed by the long descriptive passages in Danny Champion of the World, you see Dahl's magic at work - his ability to speak directly and intensely to the imaginations of children, to enter their dreams like the BFG.

I had never read Dahl's works for grown-ups so I was curious to pick this up from the library. His vivid and eccentric imagination is much in evidence in these stories, which often operate on the frontiers of believability but are told with such conviction and brilliance that he gets away with it.

There are foreshadowings of Dahl's later works - most obviously in The Champion of the World, which includes the pivotal poaching scene from Danny Champion of the World, but minus the father-son relationship which is at the heart of that book. In Galloping Foxley, Dahl revisits his miserable time at Repton, a set of experiences he mines time and again throughout his oeuvre, and finally lays to rest in autobiographical form in Boy. In the short story, the scars are rawer and there is less humour - however, the boyhood narrative is cleverly framed to suggest the lifelong impact such experiences may have, with a killer ending.

Many of the stories are highly unpredictable but full of suspense, making them exciting to read. You can see two or three obvious endings, but Dahl goes for a fourth you hadn't anticipated. Some - like the title story, Skin - are brilliant miniatures. Many of the stories centre around a character who has an utterly crazy idea - it might be born out of greed, desperation, curiosity or a desire for revenge. We read on to see how on earth the idea will be carried out and whether the plotter will get away with it. Probably my favourite Roald Dahl book as a child was George's Marvellous Medicine and my favourite parts of it were those in which George is simply putting one thing into the pot after another. What would read like a shopping list in the hands of another writer is enthralling when Dahl does it.

Not all stories are of equal quality. A couple of them get all dressed up only to find they have nowhere particular to go. But the marks of Dahl's genius are obvious and this is a highly diverting and enjoyable collection.
Profile Image for Mandy Bookstagram.
253 reviews65 followers
October 12, 2022
Roald Dahl is most beloved and best known for his best-selling children's works: James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The BFG, The Twits and George's Marvelous Medicine.

I did some research on his birthday (September 13) and decided to order Skin, because I had never heard of it before. It is perfect for the Halloween season, and I am really pleased with its realism. His children's stories are, of course, a little magical, but his tales for adults are creepy in the I-Could-Actually-Imagine-This-Happening-And-Its-Super-Creepy-kind-of-way.

Skin And Other Stories is a perfect read for anyone wanting to get into the spirit of Halloween with scary stories, or anyone who wants a bit of light reading. Because it is a collection of short stories, they can be read individually (for those who like to read just a chapter before bed) or all-together in one sitting. The title hints at the element of creepy, suspenseful stories with strange twists, full of truly unexpected endings and twisted ideas that only someone with a mind of horror could conjure. I won't give much away, but I will say you will surely be surprised by the endings!

My favorite was the first, Skin, a tale illuminating the danger of owning one-of-a-kind-artwork: everyone will want it, for themselves. Trust no one.

The collection contains Dahl's short stories: Skin; Lamb to the Slaughter; The Sound Machine; An African Story; Galloping Foxley; The Wish; The Surgeon; Dip in the Pool; The Champion of the World; Beware of the Dog; My Lady Love, My Dove. It was first published in the May 17, 1952 issue of The New Yorker, and was later featured in the collection Skin and Other Stories, published in 2000.

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Profile Image for Victor Davis.
Author 24 books68 followers
May 21, 2016
This is exactly the kind of book I remember doing book reports on in high school. I never read these stories, but I remember the "genre" of "classic" short stories. I suppose all students of all time periods refer to the ways around a hundred years ago as "classic." Alas, I shall continue the tradition. I may have only ever read "The Landlady," which was not included in this collection. Nonetheless, it cemented in my mind, along with his Hollywood successes, Dahl's basic style. The dust jacket describes his claim to fame as "fiendishly clever short story collections for adults" and that does a fine job of summing him up.

My favorites were "Skin," "An African Story," and "The Champion of the World." The last one even borders on humorous, a charming story of hubris where the ending gotchya isn't creepy at all, but puts a wide smile on your face nonetheless. I am sure this kind of book is the perfect gateway to lead young adults into the world of adult literature, and will remain so for decades to come at least.
December 12, 2013
My musings on Skin and Other Stories by Roald Dahl.

I never really know what to say about short stories, or in this case a short story compilation, they are such light, quick reading that they tend to leave little to no impression on me.

I must say though, if you are going to read a compilation of short stories you really should give Dahl's a go. Dark, eerie and lovely in traditional Dahl style. I am at a loss to which was favoured as I really enjoyed them all - although as a hunters daughter I found The Champion of the World highly amusing.

That's about all the musings I've got today. Read Roald Dahl.... that is all!
Profile Image for Kenya | Reviews May Vary.
1,262 reviews107 followers
December 26, 2016
I HATE collections of short stories. Hate. About once a year I give them "one more try." My one try this year should have just ended with Tyranny of Petticoats. But no. I discovered this little ditty by RD and just HAD to try it. It took me almost a month to read this 200 page book. And the determination of circus trainer.

As would be expected, I really like some stories and others were not even at my table, let alone my cup of tea.

I might try to review this book to see if I talk myself into more appreciation for the Collected Work.
Profile Image for Lauren.
65 reviews33 followers
February 1, 2017
I picked this up at the library as I was curious what sort of stories Roald Dahl wrote for adults, and I'm so glad I did. Every story was completely engaging from the first sentence, and had such a clever twist to it.

A literary delight. What an incredible storyteller.
April 26, 2020
I enjoyed these stories. They were entertaining and pretty fun! I don’t have much else to say about the book. Just that it’s was pretty good.
Profile Image for SurDiablo.
121 reviews12 followers
December 8, 2022
Dark and amusing short stories which were captivating from beginning to end. My favorites were The Sound Machine, Galloping Foxley, Beware of the Dog and The Champion of the World.
Profile Image for Pirita Susi.
45 reviews5 followers
June 21, 2020
Aivan muuta kuin mitä odotin aluksi!Dahlille tyypillisen veikeä kirjoitustyyli kyllä sopii tällaisiin synkempiinkin aiheisiin. Kansien sisältä löytyy parikin helmeä,kuten kokoelman nimikkonovelli Nahka.
Profile Image for Jeraviz.
981 reviews597 followers
December 22, 2017
Algunos relatos magníficos, otros parecen que están inacabados. Lo único seguro es que Roald Dahl era un maestro escribiendo e imaginando situaciones.
Profile Image for Ken.
2,435 reviews1,361 followers
January 7, 2018
Dahl's best known for he's children stories actually wrote plenty of short stories for adults, some were adapted for tv show 'Tales of the Unexpected' but these were shown nearly 40 years ago!

This collection includes 11 tales and all have their merits. My personal favorites includes Skin, Lamb to the Slaughter and Dip in the Pool.

More interestingly this collection includes The Champion of the World, written in the 50's this would later become the basis for Danny the Champion of the World

Anyone that grew up reading Dahl as a kid should certainly give this a read.

Profile Image for Rand.
16 reviews34 followers
November 3, 2014
"Skin" is amazing. Roald Dahl is a master of fiction, and these stories are some of his best works. They're from when he was still developing his craft, but are still tantalizingly mysterious.
The stories are varied in subject and theme. For example, the titular story "Skin" is about a man with a priceless tattoo on his back, while the short piece "The Wish" is a largely ambiguous story about a child's imagination gone wrong. Most of these stories have the signature Dahl twist ending, and almost all are handled very well in respect to exposition and plot. Some endings are so clouded it obscures the story itself, but this is largely not the case.
Profile Image for Travis Marcum.
104 reviews1 follower
October 13, 2023
Finished this awesome collection of short stories recently. Hard to chose a favorite as Dahl is a master at work in all of them. If I had to chose, I like “Lamb to the Slaughter” and “The Surgeon” best. Fun fact, my son’s 10th grade English class read “Lamb to the Slaughter” not long ago and he came home talking about how I would like it. He was right. #roalddahl #reading #whatyoureadingfor
Profile Image for Venla.
88 reviews
May 21, 2016
Aluksi ajattelin, että novellit ovat "tyhmiä", koska ne loppuivat niin pahasti kesken koko ajan. Mutta luettuani toisiksi viimeisen novellin Tie taivaaseen, oivalsin, että ehkä on parempi jättää novelleihin tulkinnanvaraa. 4/5 !
Profile Image for Magnus.
26 reviews1 follower
January 11, 2023
Has some pretty interesting short stories in it, some of them are a little bit more dark than Roald Dahl's standard fare, but they're still great. It's a quick read as well, and it's unlikely you'll want to put it down once you've started a short story.
Profile Image for Natalie.
241 reviews6 followers
February 28, 2023
There are short stories and then there are SHORT stories — the shortest one in this collection is 5 pages — and I just don’t think they were particularly interesting. Other than a couple that stuck out, they mostly fell flat and I was left wondering what the point was. Idk short stories are very very difficult to pull off — the shorter the story the tougher it gets to get your point across, and frankly we know Dahl is a talented author, but I get the sense he shines in longer form content.

I wouldn’t NOT recommend it but I wouldn’t recommend it
Profile Image for Claire Trammell.
26 reviews1 follower
January 3, 2025
Absolutely captivating. Each story mixing irony and social commentary, and there’s something so fantastical about Dahl’s writing and characterization. Nearly finished the book on one plane ride. Thanks, Roald!
Profile Image for Safiya.
75 reviews15 followers
December 21, 2024
Some stories felt unfinished/anticlimactic but I enjoyed most of them and the dark vibes were fun.
Profile Image for itchy.
2,595 reviews30 followers
July 8, 2018
only a couple of new stories for me, one of which is quite exceptional
Displaying 1 - 30 of 622 reviews

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