[My Uncle Oswald] looks like a recipe for pornography, and to some extent the novel is exactly that, but mere pornography is repetitious. Mr. Dahl's scheme permits him to have disrespectful fun with Proust and Shaw and such great names. Repetition is minimal. An uneven book and hardly for the delicate, but it has its high points.

Phoebe-Lou Adams, "PLA: 'My Uncle Oswald'," in The Atlantic Monthly (copyright © 1980, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass.; reprinted with permission), Vol. 245, No. 5, May, 1980, p. 104.