When I was 10, and a huge fan of books like The BFG and The Witches, my mother sat me down and explained, in rather age-inappropriate detail, the saga of Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal, her near-death experience, how he'd nursed her back to health, and then had the nerve to cheat on her and leave her for a younger woman.

At the time, I had no idea why my mother was following the love life of my favorite children's author. But then I read Sturrock's biography, and learned about the carefully choreographed press campaign that Dahl waged during Pat's rehabilitation, and the dozens of articles that portrayed them as the perfect family. In reality, their marriage had been rocky from the start, and the split not such a surprise. But to hear about it in the Ladies Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post, theirs was a love affair for the ages, and I can see how the reading public (mom included) might have been inclined to feel a little betrayed.

In the book, Sturrock goes into tremendous, though highly entertaining, detail about Dahl's early life, his family, his relationships with women, and even the Dahl family obsession with healthy bowel function. However, even with all this detail, I wish that Sturrock had spent a bit more time on the work itself. While the early short fiction gets ample treatment, most of Dahl's children's books are glossed over fairly quickly, while Dahl's many squabbles with his publishers are enumerated in full.

Still, the book is a must-read for Dahl fans and completists like me. Those who have already read Jennet Conant's The Irregulars will not be disappointed by redundant content either. Sturrock's take on Dahl's time in the U.S. is shaped very differently, and though I expected to skim these chapters, I hung on every word.

I have always been a huge fan of Roald Dahl, but after reading his biography I am even more in awe of the author that he was. Here are a few of the fascinating things I learned about him:
- He hobnobbed with Vice President Wallace and even visited Hyde Park with President Franklin D. Roosevelt
- He had many illicit affairs with older women when he was in his twenties
- He wrote the screen play for the James Bond film "You Only Live Twice"
- He was a British spy
- He was married to a famous American actress for 30 some years
- Both James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were raked over the coals by American librarians
- The NAACP accused Roald Dalh of racism with the publication of Charlie and the Chocolate factory and that is the reason that the movie is called "Wily Wonka and the Chocolate factory" and that the Oompa Loompas are orange with green hair
- Lastly, he never found true love until he was into his 60s and he was writing up until his death

He was a fascinating man who lead an incredibly interesting life. I now want to go and re-read all my favorite Roald Dahl books, and read some of his books that I never got around to.

His childhood and vivid imagination gave fodder to his success at writing for children. While I love his writing, he sadly grew up to become like a character in one of his own books.

Sturrock's biography is well-researched and detailed. He uses his primary sources well, integrating Dahl's letters and notes into the text, and he also brings in different perspectives from interviews and other secondary sources. The biography is also delightfully thematic as Sturrock uses stories and details to support his interpretation of Dahl as an outsider and a storyteller.

I'm not sure why I finished this.

For an authorized biography, this book does a good job of showing both the good and the not-so-good sides of Roald Dahl. Even had Dahl not become a bestselling, beloved children's author, his life would have been a fascinating one. Born in Britain to Norwegian parents, he flew as a fighter pilot in the early days of World War II, was a spy in Washington for the remainder, married a famous actress, and helped pioneer medical advances after tragedy struck his own family.

Sturrock doesn't hesitate to show the darker Dahl--misanthropic, touchy, hard to work with, grudge-holding, outspoken, prone to picking fights. There were a LOT of times when I felt that Dahl wasn't someone I'd want to know. Sturrock doesn't delve too much into the books and stories themselves, but provides enough information that in reading Dahl's work after this biography, I feel I have new insight into his books.

(Some of that, of course, might be because I'm reading them as a 30-something, not a 10-year-old.)

Sturrock is nothing if not comprehensive: "Storyteller" is a leave-no-stone-unturned account of Dahl's life. While at times the narrative dragged (as any chronicling of an entire life will do), overall it's a compassionate look at an often-difficult personality.

Tremendous. Mr Sturrock's fondness for Roald comes through, but in a clear seeing way...no cover-ups, we see all sorts of disaggreeable features to Dahl's life, and yet it all adds up to a man who left an interesting, unique legacy.

Having read all of Dahl's autobiographical work (Boy, Going Solo, that How I Became A Writer bit in Henry Sugar), it was eye opening to read his biography.

Sturrock had access to Dahl's remaining family, and more importantly, his archives. Most of the real action in Dahl's life took place when he was tucked away in a caravan by himself with a blanket and a heater, writing his wonderful stories, for adults, then for children.

When not in his caravan, he looked after his family, took a keen interest in his business affairs and making cash and, well, could be a bit of a shit, with drunken arguements and fall outs with friends and collaborators par for the course. Perhaps understandably, as his physical condition was not good, and his family suffering a series of tragedies that made the middle section of this book harrowing going.

Most interesting to me was Dahl's view of himself as an outsider, never conforming to any individual's or the literary establishment's expectations, and the fact that he came to writing later in life. His time as a pilot in the war and as a diplomat in Washington were facinating, and I got the feeling Sturrock could have added more gossip and scandal in this section - I'm intrigued!

Recommedned to any fan of Dahl's stories - I'm looking forward to reading his work to my kids even more after reading this.