As promised yesterday, I will be reviewing the stories from Roald Dahl’s short story collection, “A Taste of the Unexpected.” The first story up is the short “Taste.”

The scene opens at the dinner table. The narrator and his wife are the spectators in a rare gustatory spectacle at the table of the stockbroker Mike Schofield. One of the other guests on the table is a so-called professional gourmet by the name of Richard Pratt. The two gentlemen - Mike and Richard - have this habit of making bets centered around the wine served by the stockbroker. Mike gives Richard the task of guessing the bottle’s pedigree - a skill that, according to legend, the good gourmet has almost perfected. Each attempt carries a wager, with a crate of the said vintage at stake.

During this dinner, however, both Richard and Mike decide to bring up the stakes. When Mike brings in the claret for the night, Richard demands that for this wager, the stakes would be the hand of Mike’s daughter in marriage against two of Richard’s properties. This is where the story comes to a head, since there was no way Louise, Mike’s daughter, would give her hand in marriage to a gourmet. But the temptation of two relatively good pieces of property is more than the stockbroker could take, and he eventually persuades his daughter to agree to the bet. The question thereafter being whether or not Richard Pratt could correctly name the wine for the main course.

So technically speaking, this story is shortish, with Dahl relying mostly on expounding the emotions of each character throughout the story. The way the narrator describes Richard Pratt is with a reserved repulsion, slowly becoming more and more apparent as the story progresses. One point in the story, in fact, doesn’t even hide the narrator’s extreme disgust for the gourmet’s nasty habits.

For the most part, though, Mike doesn’t do too well himself. The narrator does a pretty good job making him seem excited at the start, and increasingly dejected and beaten towards the end. You’d assume that he isn’t exactly the healthiest of people, and while he is an impressive man, you get the feeling that he doesn’t command as much respect as you’d think (the description of how he sees his position as a stockbroker, a man who ” . . . made so much money on so slight a talent . . . ” makes you think that he doesn’t have much respect for himself).

On the whole this story is a mere taste of what the collection has to offer. While the hook - which does come in the end - isn’t anywhere as twisted as the following stories, it lets you peek into what Dahl’s “other” fiction is like. As all stories go, this is like taking a shower before you plunge into the cold waters of a swimming pool, and although it isn’t as full-bodied an experience, it’s enough to whet your appetite. Or to sate your curiosity, whichever it was that led you to read the book in the first place.

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