This book collects seven stories that Roald Dahl was published separately between 1940 and 1950, but once assembled form a surprising amount of thematic unity, plot and style. I read a review which describe these stories as "chilling ghost story without ghosts, and I think the description perfect sense of unease that remains in the reader after reading some stories seem so innocent and quaint.
The mysteries and eccentricities of rural life that exemplify these stories are presented to us by the hand of a first-person narrator, who acts as an outside observer and target (although it occasionally gets involved in the action) of behavior, customs and reasoning of his friends and neighbors of the English people who have gone to live, and the relentless logic of common sense applied by these people for his most barbaric, amazing, disgusting or simply unimaginable. The irony is so subtle as it is black humor, and an inattentive reader could to think that the author simply to chronicle any manners of a people and its people. But it is clear that Roald Dahl has only what you have, that their choice of characters, situations and outcomes has been very meditate for a composicón result might have been inspired by a painting by Brueghel: a collection of rural scenes of apparent normal until the viewer begins to notice the details.
A book very apt to be read by all unrepentant urbanite who are convinced that Hell is other people in the countryside. These stories will give you enough material to satisfy himself that they were right.
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