"There is, across all the biographies, a strange sense that, for Dahl, life did not grow bigger and richer, but smaller and shallower—that, by the end of it, he had shrunk into himself, rather like Mr. and Mrs. Twit.
[...]
Matilda’s smallness thus differs from ordinary human vulnerability. It measures the cultural fragility of reading literature in a world that refuses to protect or nourish it."

#book #review #literarycriticism #RoaldDahl #MatthewDennison #MerveEmre

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/12/22/making-it-big-roald-dahl-teller-of-the-unexpected/