Inteligent, amuzant și bădăran pe alocuri, însă devine după 50 de pagini repetitiv și plictisitor. Oricât de bună e poanta, e prea lungă.

“I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.”

This book started with the following line: "Behold Uncle Oswald, Michelangelo of seduction. He makes Casanova look like Winnie the Pooh." That was funny, right? This was my first Roald Dahl book and I picked this one randomly. Lo and behold, it was an adult book with an amusing yet sort-of absurd plot.

This book continues the adventures of Uncle Oswald instroduced in Dahl's short story collections. I thought I would get tired of the a full length story about Uncle Oswald and the making of his fortune but I was wrong. I couldn't put it down.

"My Uncle Oswald" is mad and outrageous and hilarious. I'd forgotten how funny Roald Dahl books were, not having read any since school days.

The story is utterly fantastic but I lapped it up like a cat does cream. Plot involves the discovery of a Viagra-like compound and features precursors to female Viagra, IVF, and sperm banks. Marvellous story-telling by Dahl through an unscrupulous but charming narrator.

Don't make the mistake of pegging Dahl as only a children's author. It's time for all grown-ups to revisit the Dahl corpus!

What I learned from this book is that Roald Dahl has some serious issues with women. I loved all his children's books and I had heard that he was a lot more scandalous in his adult fiction but damn! This book is based on the fake memoirs of Uncle Oswald, the "greatest fornicator of all time". I thought it would be a fun and funny read (which it was in some sense), but it was also glorifying the sexual abuse and use of women for men's pleasure. The main redeeming quality is that Oswald, the main character, gets swindled in the end. I think that is part of what kept me reading it. I wanted him to get screwed, pardon the pun.

Aside from the obvious issues, there was a funny story buried in there. Oswald gets rich from selling "potency pills" made from a rare beetle that is found only in Sudan. He then uses these pills to arouse famous men so that he can steal their sperm and sell to lonely women. Interesting plot if it didn't revolve around his female assistant getting raped each time to collect the sperm. Hmm. Overall, a large disappointment.

Quizás sea un libro de más puntuación, pero es que es machista hasta decir basta. Qué digo machista, es más que eso, no hay palabra para describirlo. Además de ciertos toques de homofobia y hostilidad hacia los animales.
En fin, que la pluma del autor está muy bien, como siempre, pero esta historia no tiene ni pies ni cabeza. No me ha gustado nada, y solo me ha creado malestar mientras lo leía. Una pena porque todo lo que había leído de este autor me había gustado, y no había notado machismo. Espero que sea solo en este libro.

A comical read, for sure. I found it to be quite repetitive and a boring throughout the middle. However, the start and finish of the book were fantastic. A great lesson in the end.

It was pretty funny but also very outdated language which can be disturbing for a reader in this century. Could perhaps be a good movie script rather than a book if its well adapted.

Nu e ceea ce ne-am fi așteptat de la Roald Dahl. Parțial amuzant, parțial problematic.

Nonsensical funny booklet of an author I love – but actually known for his children book. English humor and almost nothing more; but…where on earth is “No Sex Please, We're British”?

He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good, either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.
Wo which living geniuses, in 1860, would you have chosen as donors?’
‘Dickens,’ he said.
‘Go on.’
‘And Ruskin… and Mark Twain.’
‘And Brahms,’ I said, ‘and Wagner and Tchaikovsky and Dvorak. The list is very long. Authentic geniuses every one of them. Go back further in the century, if you like, to Balzac, to Beethoven, to Napoleon, to Goya, to Chopin. Wouldn’t it be exciting if we had in our liquid nitrogen bank a couple of hundred straws of the living sperm of Beethoven?’
Yasmin got out of the car. ‘This banana’s a bit uncomfortable,’ she said.
‘Now you know what it’s like to be a man,’ I said.
But there’s no comparison between the way a great creative genius handles his sword and the way an ordinary fellow does it. That’s why I’m having such a nice time.’
‘Am I an ordinary fellow?’
‘Don’t get grumpy,’ she said. ‘We can’t all be Rachmaninov or Puccini.’
I was deeply wounded. Yasmin had pricked me in my most sensitive area.
Our second important donor in Berlin was Mr Thomas Mann. Yasmin reported that he was pleasant but uninspiring.
‘Like his books,’ I said.

Sentí una pulsada de emoción al leer la contraportada de este libro -como si hubiera ingerido un escarabajo sudanés-, fui contra él y comencé a devorarlo.

Lo peculiar de Dahl es que su mayor trabajo reconocido es en el rango de literatura para infantil. Libros encantadores que han cruzado las fronteras hacia otros medios artísticos. El tío Oswald es en cambio, un texto sobre un tipo sin escrúpulos, lascivo y ambicioso. El libro está lleno de picardía, Ingenio y humor.

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