I don't think a lot of people realize this, but Roald Dahl was a crazy twisted motherfucker in the best way. Naturally, he's best known for his children's stories, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach, but what you may not know is that he wrote some adult's stories, including the ones in this volume of short stories, that are brilliantly, hilariously dark and fucked up.There is a collection of four stories in this volume. They are very short, and my paperback copy runs to just over 140 pages. This is not a book for children, unless you:1. Really, really hate your child2. Want to fuck them up by building up twisted ideals of love and friendship3. Have a lot of money for therapy4. Want your child to be sent home from school for molesting other childrenAlso, don't expect political correctness here. You will get none. This book pokes fun of other nationalities... I have a powerful suspicion, though I hate to say it, that the Egyptians wash themselves less thoroughly than any other peoples in the world --- with the possible exception of the Mongolians.Women. ...I cannot believe that any man in his senses would put up with just one female day after day and year after year.It makes fun of everyone, actually. Read it with a light heart.I read this book for my Comic Spirit class while I was in college, and it was one of the forced reading that I've continually enjoyed and read for pleasure. No spoilers, but here's a taste of what you might come to expect in this book.Take note: there are some twistedly twists in this book. It's pretty sick :DThere's the story of the infamous Uncle Oswald, world-renowned traveler and Casanova extraodinaire, who cannot settle down with one women because he likes the thrill of the chase. He has an odd flare to his nose that drives women wild. Men want to befriend him. Women want to conquer him. They, of course, are never successful.Uncle Oswald once found himself in the desert, in the story "The Visitor." He is stranded on the road, and taken in by a wonderfully and vaguely Middle-Eastern man, who brings him to his house and treats him like a king.Oswald, in return, intends to seduce his hosts' wife or daughter. Or maybe both. Eeny, meeny, miny, mo --- just a little while ago, Prince Oswald had sworn that he would ravish the Queen alone, and to hell with the Princess. But now that he had seen the Princess in the flesh, he did not know which one to prefer.What will happen? Will Oswald be able to seduce the wife, the daughter? Or both? The answer is fabulously fucked up.In "The Switch," we have two neighbors...one of whom covets his neighbor's wife...he slowly plants a seed in his neighbor's head, and together, they seek to seduce each others' wives without them knowing it. Hence, "The Switch." Many details of logistics will need to be ironed out, like the cock size. Surely a wife would know. Just as long as both men were either circumsised or uncircumsised, then there was really no problem. You'd be surprised at the number of men whose measurements are virtually the same, give or take a centimetre."They start wearing the same aftershaves. One of them stops smoking...and then comes D Day, including strategies to fool the wives such as "The Sticking Plaster Ploy," "The Familiarization With the Layout," and "Spilling the Beans." ...it was here that both of us had to describe in every detail the procedure we adopted when making love to our own wives.Will they succeed? Will they succeed beyond their wildest expectations? Read on, find out.
Original pre-read review, 4/15/2012:This does not sound like the Roald Dahl I remember. Color me intrigued.After reading, 9/10/2013:So yeah, okay, this isn't the Roald Dahl I remember. But somehow it is. His style is all there: the dry humor, creepiness, and gross-out shock value all play a big part in these stories. They're just not for kids anymore. These four tales are all about sex, sex, SEX. I was actually expecting them to be a bit more titillating, but it turns out they're not explicit at all -- most of the action is implied and all the juicy bits happen "offscreen". These stories are highly dated, though. This was published in the 1960's, so I'm not too surprised, but the attitudes towards sex and gender roles as portrayed here are definitely of another era. All of the male characters are highly misogynistic, and that's at their best -- many of them are downright rapey. Still, they all have twist endings and the men who have taken advantage of women in the stories typically have their plans backfire and get some punishment."The Visitor" -- 3 starsIntroduces the over-the-top hedonist and spider enthusiast (but germophobic) Oswald Hendryks Cornelius along with the story of one of his trysts. This was probably my favorite of the collection. Uncle Oswald is one of those people that would be absolutely insufferable in real life--a snobby womanizer who is completely self-absorbed--but he is wonderfully amusing as a character to read about. "The Great Switcheroo" -- 3 starsTwo neighbors arrange to secretly have sex with each others' wives without the ladies finding out about it. This goes about as well as you would expect."The Last Act" -- 2 starsDefinitely my least favorite. This one isn't funny at all like the other three; it's mostly just depressing. I found the first part boring and the ending vaguely confusing. Meh."Bitch" -- 3 starsUncle Oswald is back and this time he's collaborating with a talented "nose" to create a perfume that will make a woman absolutely irresistable to any men who smell her. As in, they will be overcome by animal instincts, rip her clothes off, and assault her. See what I mean about the rapey?Overall rating: 3 stars
Do You like book Switch Bitch (1989)?
"Del mismo modo que una mujer aficionada a los caballos acabará por tener las piernas estevadas de tanto montar, a una mujer muy apasionada los hombros se le redondean curiosamente de tanto abrazar a los hombres. Se trata de una deformación profesional, la más noble de todas ellas"Relegar la lectura de Roald Dahl a sus historias infantiles me parece el error más grande que pueda cometerse. Cuatro relatos de lo más ameno, divertido, terriblemente amoral, sorprendente y desconcertante. Donde Relatos de lo inesperado tenía como eje central historias corrientes con un final que deja al lector a cuadros, en El gran cambiazo el tema es el sexo como motor. Con personajes depravados. Loquísimo esto, vamos. Roald Dahl no estaba bien de lo suyo.
—Sara Gould
After reading a book that was quite big and more than 700 pages and took me almost three weeks to read it all I realized I was so much left behind regarding the challenge and I had to find a new one that would have less pages and finish it the same day probably so to stand a chance to complete the challenge by the end of the year. So what could be more suitable than this 140 pages book one? It’s been ages since I had a Dahl’s novel in my hand, I don’t even remember the last time that this happened, but I am sure it’s more than 15 years for sure. In my surprise “Switch Bitch” is not exactly the typical book for a child or perhaps a teenager to read. Well the title of the book more or less indicates that there won’t be a film based on it and produced by Disney or Pixar. Still inside those short stories are like fairy tales but the only relation with children is that they mostly have to do with the whole procedure that takes place so that children will be “created”. I must admit that in some moments it was amusing, quite funny to see how things were going differently than the main character of the story was expecting them to be, there was always a sort of unexpected ending in them all but ok my goal was completed. I thought it would be much less mostly because many readers would not like the fact that it is not like “Matilda” or “BFG” at all and perhaps they even bought it and got disappointed after (especially if they intended to read it to their children, moreover if it’s their daughters hehe). It may have seen like I was reading short stories from a men’s magazine at some points but it’s not that I felt like forced to go on, it kept me going by itself. In my opinion (though I have no clue how this whole collection was created) it would be much better if the main character was the same in all the short stories. It’s a bit strange that he is mentioned in the first and the last one only. Also since the stories all took place many years ago it would be nicer if there was a reference to a historical event of that time, a fact that happened, I can’t even tell which decade it is. I did finish it in less than 24 hours and it was fun doing it. I couldn’t help sneaking to see the rating of the book after and I saw that it has 4.03 at the moment. So I will decrease this rating a bit since it wasn’t a masterpiece or something that left me amazed, and after the ending of the first short story I could tell that all the endings in the next ones will be similar.
—Tasos Anastasopoulos
Just in case Switch Bitch’s title didn’t clue you in, let me assure you: this is not a collection of tales concerning chocolate manufacturing or big peaches. First appearing in Playboy, these 4 stories were written for an adult male audience with one thing on its mind—SEX! Mankind’s favorite pastime is what draws you into these stories yet it’s Dahl’s excellent plotting and diabolical creativity that keeps you turning the pages.The first story, “The Visitor,” starring the irrepressible Uncle Oswald (never has such a morally repugnant protagonist been such good company) is fantastic. Strange, funny, and titillating, it keeps you on edge until the good, old-fashioned twist ending. The next two stories are equally engaging if a little less satisfying (in fact, in a pinch, you might skip the third altogether), but the last, featuring Oswald again, feels thoroughly unique in its sex-farce weirdness. I believe The Best of Roald Dahl contains this collection’s best story, and possibly one of the others as well, so the bang for the buck is elsewhere. Sometimes, however, a slim volume of concentrated devilish entertainment such as Switch Bitch is exactly the kind of literary lightning needed to jumpstart an imagination. It certainly got me thinking…
—Nick
