Aaron Tracy

In such a cruel mirror to his own childhood, Olivia is seven when she dies, the same age Dahl's older sister Astrid was when she died.

the defining moment of Dahl's childhood repeated again in his adulthood.

In Dahl's memoir, Boy, he writes about Astri.

She was far and away my father's favorite, he says.

He adored her beyond measure, and her sudden death left him literally speechless for days afterwards.

Dahl's father was so overwhelmed with grief that when he himself went down with pneumonia a few weeks after Astri died, he didn't care whether or not he survived, Dahl writes.

A patient had to fight to survive.

My father refused to fight.

He was thinking, I am quite sure, of his beloved daughter.

And he was wanting to join her in heaven.

So he died too.

He was 57 years old.

My mother had now lost a daughter and a husband, all in the space of a few weeks.

Heaven knows what it must have felt like to be hit with a double catastrophe like this, Dahl finishes.

Which is such a strange turn of phrase, because of course, Dahl was hit with it too.

He was three years old.

So, the big question right now for Dahl, can he be stronger than his father was?

He genuinely doesn't know the answer.

He becomes lost.

He begins drinking more and taking more painkillers for his old back injury from the plane crash.