The Candy Man Can

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was ten years old and already the magic was gone from the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, leprechauns, Santa Claus and his buddy the Krampus. All was stripped of its power to enthrall. Heck, even sex had been demystified years prior.

Then along came Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It gloried in candy, my number one passion of the day. But not only that, eating candy was the means to getting even MORE candy!



Ah, the golden ticket. How, oh, how I longed for it to be a real thing! I would've traded in a half dozen Christmasses for that.

For those few who haven't read the book or seen one of the movies, finding a golden ticket in a candy bar meant you got to visit Willy Wonka's mysterious chocolate factory, which had been closed to the public and rumored to be run by a madman.

Once poor-and-ever-so-grateful Charlie makes it inside the factory everything comes alive! The amazing sights, sounds, smells and tastes! The sky's the limit (quite literally we discover in the second book). Wonka's childlike imagination seems to know no bounds!

But then things turn a bit queer. One by one, the children invited into the factory start dropping off and in the most interesting of ways. This is a fight to the finish and it becomes clear that there can be only one!

I don't know what was better, the candy or the killing off of brats. Ah but to be serious, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory brought back the wonder and excitement of my earliest memories. Thank you Roald Dahl for giving me back magic, the sweetest gift of all.



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