Roald Dahl
The main character here is really almost the only character. Unlike Dahl’s memoirs of childhood and early adulthood, this is not an autobiography in the traditional sense in which events and people from the past are recalled and made real through vivid description. If those earlier books can be compared to realistic representative portrait of the past, My Year is more like one of those fuzzy Impressionist paintings which give an idea of its subject without trying for photographic replication. One must stand back at a far enough distance to understand the whole picture; looking closely at each individual chapter only provides insight into aspects peculiar to that section. Those aspects range from the “remarkable animals” that are moles to memories of Easter trips to see the monks practicing their vow of silence on Caldy Island to the “extraordinary bird” called the cuckoo and “all its nasty habits.
The Reader
Readers of this volume are invited to become a character of sorts through a recurrence of the author directly addressing readers with the second person pronoun “you” or by creating a sense of communion with the author himself through the inclusive “we.” For instance, he writes “But here we are now in July, in the present, not 1934. So look around you and see what is going on in the countryside.” This intimate and unusual utilization of direct address has the cumulative effect of making the reader feel more like a companion or collaborator in the process of detailing in journal fashion the author’s thoughts and observations than a mere observer peeking through windows.
