Book Review: The Twit by Roald Dahl

The Twits is one of the shorter books in the Dahl canon, and rather unique as it focuses almost exclusively upon its two principal villains, the totally vile Mr. and Mrs. Twit.


The book begins with a description of both nasty pieces of work, from Mr. Twit’s disgusting beard to the fact that Mrs. Twit made herself ugly through thinking ugly thoughts (a rather nice object lesson).

Two aspects of the Twits I especially like which really show how well they work as characters are their lovely, false affectionate pet names (especially when being vile to each other), and the way that they take absolute delight in not only tricking each other in profoundly nasty ways, but gleefully revealing to the other one exactly what they’ve done.


It’s a nice book. There are lot of revenges and pranks in the story. But one would not like to be like the Twits.