Вино от глухарчета

Green Town #1

by Ray Bradbury, Рей Бредбъри (Автор), Жени Божилова (Преводач)

Любовно писмо до едно детство...

Лятото на 1928-а е златно време за едно подрастващо момче. Лято на ябълкови дръвчета, окосени ливади и нови гуменки; на бране на глухарчета и на преяждане с вкусните гозби на баба; време на скърби и чудеса, на златни пчели. Магично лято, през което времето сякаш е спряло в живота на дванайсетгодишния Дъглас Споулдинг – запечатано от несравнимия Рей Бредбъри.

Рей Бредбъри е сред най-известните писатели на съвремието. Някои от най-популярните му произведения са "451 градуса по Фаренхайт", "Марсиански хроники", "Вино от глухарчета". Писал е за театъра и за киното, негов е сценарият за превърналата се в класика екранизация по "Моби Дик" на режисьора Джон Хюстън. Номиниран е за наградата "Оскар". Адаптирал е шейсет и пет от своите разкази за телевизионната поредица "Театърът на Рей Бредбъри". Има награда "Еми" за телевизионната си пиеса "Дървото на вси светии". През 2000 г. Рей Бредбъри е удостоен от Националната фондация за книги с медал за изключителни заслуги към американската книжовност.

Върнете се с майстора Рей Бредбъри там, където е вечният дом на сърцето, във времето на сбогуване и недоловима, изумителна промяна, където силният вкус на "Вино от глухарчета" остава по езика като лелеян спомен...

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories, Young Adult, Coming Of Age

315 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Ray Douglas Bradbury was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction.

Bradbury is best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and The October Country (1955). Other notable works include the coming of age novel Dandelion Wine (1957), the dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) and the fictionalized memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space. Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. Bradbury also wrote poetry which has been published in several collections, such as They Have Not Seen the Stars (2001).

The New York Times called Bradbury "An author whose fanciful imagination, poetic prose, and mature understanding of human character have won him an international reputation" and "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream".

Reviews

[Peter D · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only reason I gave this book five stars was because I couldn't give it five thousand.

I can't express how beautiful this book is. I've never cried so hard (no, not even when Mrs. Johnson read us "Where the Red Fern Grows" in the third grade), nor have I felt so much love from a bunch of grouped together, sixty-year-old, courier-fonted words. I've never been more scared than I was by the possibility of the Lonely One being just around the corner, hiding in the shadows. I've never thought so much about my own mortality without running away from the subject in fear and forced-naivete. I've never felt more fulfilled by a reading experience on both an intellectual and spiritual level as I was with "Dandelion Wine."

Read it. I beg of you. Your life will be better for it.

[Lyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them.”

I re-read this after a couple of decades and like most works, I appreciate it better now than then.

“A good night sleep, or a ten minute bawl, or a pint of chocolate ice cream, or all three together, is good medicine.”

It could be that the 40 plus year old is better suited to understand the perspective of the mature writer than the 16-year-old reader, or it could just be that this great work speaks on many different levels.

“The first thing you learn in life is you're a fool. The last thing you learn in life is you're the same fool.”

Fundamental Bradbury, this work explores many of the themes that are representative of his canon: coming of age, spirituality, imagination, and the importance of remaining human amidst an ever increasingly dehumanizing world of technology.

“Sandwich outdoors isn’t a sandwich anymore. Tastes different than indoors, notice? Got more spice. Tastes like mint and pinesap. Does wonders for the appetite.”

*** 2023 reread -

We should have an emergency box in our homes, if life is getting rough, we can break the glass and retrieve a Bradbury book to help us get through the day.

Bradbury makes me smile. His writing, here especially but in most of his canon, goes beyond poetry or prose and is instead an incantation. Ray was a mischievous sorcerer and cast for us spells to evoke a quieter time; a mystical, fantastic landscape where generational families exist and flourish and where adventures can still be had.

Modern critics could decry the antiquated sentimentality of his writing but I would submit instead that his work is timeless and is evocative of a universal human nature: we want to belong and we also want to love and laugh and have fun and the summer of 1928 he describes is still alive in the hearts and souls of children who don’t even know Bradbury and on the painted cave walls of our collective psyche.

This time I paid more attention to the subtle notes of horror dripping disquietude into his otherwise charming idyll. I wonder if David Lynch was inspired by this book when he produced and directed Twin Peaks or Blue Velvet. All three works describe a sunny setting with plenty of shadows creeping around the edges.

Bottles of home made dandelion wine line the basement shelves to recall for us each day of summer past so that we can relive the warmth of July on even the coldest day of December.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magic Realism - according to Wikipedia

"Magical realism, magic realism, or marvelous realism is a genre of narrative fiction and, more broadly, art (literature, painting, film, theatre, etc.) that, while encompassing a range of subtly different concepts, expresses a primarily realistic view of the real world while also adding or revealing magical elements. It is sometimes called fabulism, in reference to the conventions of fables, myths, and allegory. "Magical realism", perhaps the most common term, often refers to fiction and literature in particular, with magic or the supernatural presented in an otherwise real-world or mundane setting."

This book is the essence of Magic Realism. If you are a fan of other Magic Realism books (i.e. McCammon's Boy's Life) you should definitely check this out. The setting is small town America, the main characters are your average young boys, but the things they encounter are far from normal (or are they?) - you will question what is real and what is imagination.

Nostalgia, young vs old, new ideas vs the status quo are all main themes. Learning from past mistakes, respecting the experience of your elders, and history repeating itself all make appearances. There is no life or death - just sunrises/sunsets, new beginnings, strong tradition, and acceptance of your place in all of it.

This book is deeply poetic and rightly so. A fantastically written story that should be read by anyone that appreciates great literature. I am looking forward to the sequel, Something Wicked This Way Comes.

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dandelion wine stands for memory and in Dandelion Wine memory plays the leading role.

And there, row upon row, with the soft gleam of flowers opened at morning, with the light of this June sun glowing through a faint skin of dust, would stand the dandelion wine. Peer through it at the wintry day – the snow melted to grass, the trees were reinhabitated with bird, leaf, and blossoms like a continent of butterflies breathing on the wind. And peering through, color sky from iron to blue. Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in.

Memory is a powerful time machine allowing us to travel through the past.

The reason why grownups and kids fight is because they belong to separate races. Look at them, different from us. Look at us, different from them. Separate races, and never the twain shall meet.

Childhood turns the world into the magic theatre and the old age takes the magic away…

War's never a winning thing. You just lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms.

Dandelion Wine is a tale of growing up and acquiring wisdom bit by bit.

Trolleys, big as they are, always come to the end of the line…

And we are like those trolleys – we always come to the end of our line.

[Darwin8u · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I want to feel all there is to feel, he thought. Let me feel tired, now, let me feel tired. I mustn't forget, I'm alive, I know I'm alive, I mustn't forget it tonight or tomorrow or the day after that."
-Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine



Ingredients

1 quart yellow dandelion blossoms, well rinsed
1 gallon boiling water
1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
1 orange, sliced
1 lemon slice

Directions

Place dandelion blossoms in the boiling water, and allow to stand for 4 minutes. Remove and discard the blossoms, and let the water cool to 90 degrees F (32 degrees C).

Stir in the yeast, sugar, orange slices, and lemon slice; pour into a plastic fermentor, and attach a fermentation lock. Let the wine ferment in a cool area until the bubbles stop, 10 to 14 days. Siphon the wine off of the lees, and strain through cheesecloth before bottling in quart-sized, sterilized canning jars with lids and rings. Age the wine at least a week for best flavor.*

Review

Periodically this year I've been revisiting the great novels of my youth. I can't escape Ray Bradbury. He was the Michael Chabon of my childhood. He taught me to see magic in seasons and find miracles in the ordinary moments in the day. This is another Bradbury reread from 30 years ago that has improved with age. Add sugar and nostalgia and time. Let life ferment you for 30 years. Come back to his delicate, nuanced prose. Read his sweet notes of youth, of a past infused with both sunshine and magic and see if you don't add a couple stars to your re-read.

Reading this on the Fourth of July was nearly perfect. This book, bookended a day filled with family BBQs, fireworks, community festivals, apple pie and icecream. The book bottles youth, Summer, Americana, etc. It is a love note to being alive, being young, and flirting with the knowledge that life IS fleating, Summer ends, friends move, loved ones die, and there are no machine of happiness. Just 93 days, 15 hours, and 38 minutes of Summer in 2017 to be absorbed one day, one smell, one word at a time.

* stolen wholecloth from one Internet receipe machine or another. Look for the one that is smoking.

[Candi · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.”

I only needed to read the first paragraph of this beautifully written, evocative novel to guess it would be a favorite. I’ve also read enough reviews and sampled Bradbury’s writing personally to know that it had a better than fair chance to land on that esteemed shelf. This delivered what I needed amidst another restless, chaotic summer. It’s good to be reminded of those days when summer stretched endlessly and with such promise. Douglas and his brother and friends lived ordinary lives in small-town America, but the way they experienced their lives was nothing short of extraordinary and poignant when told with such delicious prose.

“Sitting on the summer-night porch was good, so easy and so reassuring that it could never be done away with. These were rituals that were right and lasting; the lighting of pipes, the pale hands that moved knitting needles in the dimness, the eating of foil-wrapped, chill Eskimo Pies, the coming and going of all the people.”

For a short time, while in the company of this book, I relived a bit of my own summertime childhood. I’ve never sipped on dandelion wine, yet I could taste its bittersweet tang and see its golden honey color. I remember running wild and unattended through the neighborhood, ending up in places that parents would likely have frowned upon. I recall strange sights and sounds, people that I didn’t know and to whom I attached my own little made-up stories. I remember overhearing the conversations of grown-ups while playing hide and seek at dusk with my sister and friends. They didn’t always make sense but they were often comforting, occasionally unsettling. And then there were the dark places that little children were afraid to get near. For us it was “the witch’s house” and the street beyond the hill behind our own home. For Douglas and company, it was The Ravine. The Ravine represents more than just a shadowy chasm but also a figurative place one might cross when coming of age. This is the summer when Douglas will make that leap from childhood to adolescence and a greater understanding that the world is not always what it seems.

“There were a million small towns like this all over the world. Each as dark, as lonely, each as removed, as full of shuddering and wonder. The reedy playing of minor-key violins was the small towns’ music, with no lights, but many shadows. Oh, the vast swelling loneliness of them. The secret damp ravines of them. Life was a horror lived in them at night, when at all sides sanity, marriage, children, happiness, were threatened by an ogre called Death.”

We might all grow up in different places, but the growing up itself, the coming to terms with what real life holds, is much the same the world over. The suffering and the heartache are there but hopefully the sweet promise of that dandelion wine will keep us going year after year. What else can we do?

“Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising a glass to lip and tilting summer in.”

[Amber · Rating 1 out of 5]

Um....ok so I totally hated this book. I hope someone out there can tell me why this is a good book. It's unique, sure, but it's just a mess of words. In reading the introduction, I felt like I got a sense of why that is. The author said he forced himself to word-dump every single morning - just writing as creatively etc as he could. Well, I think he just put those "creative" word-dumps together and called it a story. It has no story line, no voice, no character development, no point. The author just seems to want to hear himself write....

[Kimber Silver · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Dandelion Wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered…"

As I turned the first page, I found myself in an Illinois berg by the name of Green Town. The year was 1928; a summer packed with possibilities had just begun for Douglas Spaulding and his pals.

"Sandwich outdoors isn’t a sandwich anymore. Tastes different than indoors, notice? Got more spice. Tastes like mint and pinesap. Does wonders for the appetite."

I delighted in Bradbury’s cinematic imagery as I met the town’s inhabitants one by one and discovered what lay behind their closed doors.

"Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer."

This read like a string of short stories with Doug Spalding as the hub that tied them all together; each person he encountered took center stage and shared their part of the story.

"Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder."

When my journey began, I imagined a coming-of-age tale. And it was to a small extent, but more than that, it was an exploration of love, loss, aging, and a realization that where we are is precisely where we are meant to be.

"No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now."

Bradbury’s poetic prose flowed like a lazy river, expertly carrying me through this enchanting novel. If you haven’t read Dandelion Wine, I highly recommend that you spend some time in small-town Illinois.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

My introduction to the fiction of Ray Bradbury is Dandelion Wine, his much-loved ode to small towns, summers and strangeness as only a twelve-year-old boy could discover it. Published in 1957, the book is not a short story collection per se but of the twenty-seven vignettes, ten had been published before: "Season of Disbelief" and "The Window" appeared in Collier's in 1950, "A Story About Love" in McCall's in 1951, "The Lawns of Summer" in Nation’s Business in 1952, "The Swan" in Cosmopolitan and "The Magical Kitchen" in Everywoman’s Magazine in 1954, "The Trolley" in Good Housekeeping in 1955, etc.

Bradbury's ability to enrapture me is divided between his marvelous curiosities (tinkerers, time travel, ghosts, witchcraft, tarot cards, Death) and his prose, which is jeweled and beautifully captures the glow of a boy's summer. When it comes to a strong narrative or characters I could relate to, the book left me wanting, with most of the chapters or vignettes feeling more like what would fill three or four paragraphs of a book as it gears up or takes a break from its central story. If there are central characters, they would be Douglas Spaulding, a twelve-year-old boy and his ten-year-old brother Tom, who experience the summer of 1928 in their hometown of Green Town, Illinois.

From "Summer in the Air": Well, he felt sorry for boys who lived in California where they wore tennis shoes all year and never knew what it was to get winter off your feet, peel off the iron leather shoes all full of snow and rain and run barefoot for a day and then lace on the first new tennis shoes of the season, which was better than barefoot. The magic was always in the new pair of shoes. The magic might die by the first of September, but now in late June there was still plenty of magic, and shoes like these could jump you over trees and rivers and houses. And if you wanted, they could jump you over fences and sidewalks and dogs.

From "The Swan": It was the face of spring, it was the face of summer, it was the warmness of clover breath. Pomegranate glowed in her lips, and the noon sky in her eyes. To touch her face was that always new experience of opening your window one December morning, early, and putting out your hand to the first white cool powdering of snow that had come, silently, with no announcement, in the night. And all of this, this breath-warmness and plum-tenderness was held forever in one miracle of photographic chemistry which no clock winds could blow upon to change one hour or one second; this fine first cool white snow would never melt, but live a thousand summers.

That was the photograph; that was the way he knew her.

From "The Tarot Witch": Now Douglas knew why the arcade had drawn him so steadily this week and drew him still tonight. For there was a world completely set in place, predictable, certain, sure, with its bright silver slots, its terrible gorilla behind glass forever stabbed by waxen hero to save still more waxen heroine, and then the flipping waterfalling chitter of Keystone Kops on eternal photographic spindles set spiraling in darkness by Indian-head pennies under naked bulb light. The Kops, forever in collision or near-collision with train, truck, streetcar, forever gone off piers in oceans which did not drown, because there they rushed to collide again with train, truck, streetcar, dive off old and beautifully familiar pier. Worlds within worlds, the penny peek shows which you cranked to repeat old rites and formulas. There, when you wished, the Wright Brothers sailed sandy winds at Kittyhawk, Teddy Roosevelt exposed his dazzling teeth, San Francisco was built and burned, burned and built, as long as sweaty coins fed self-satisfied machines.

From "Dinner at Dawn": Whoever he was or whatever he was and no matter how different and crazy he seemed, he was not crazy. As he himself had often explained gently, he had tired of business in Chicago many years before and looked around for a way to spend the rest of his life. Couldn't stand churches, though he appreciated their ideas, and having a tendency toward preaching and decanting knowledge, he bought the horse and the wagon and set out to spend the rest of his life seeing it that one part of town had a chance to pick over what the other part of town had cast off. He looked upon himself as a kind of process, like osmosis, that made various cultures within the city limits available to one another. He could not stand waste, for he knew that one man's junk is another man's luxury.

My favorite vignette in Dandelion Wine is "The Swan", in which a young newspaper columnist named Bill Forrester impresses ninety-five year old Miss Helen Loomis with the way he orders at an ice cream parlor. An unlikely relationship blooms based on an old photo he finds that was taken in 1853, when Helen was twenty. The way the old woman makes the younger man feel experienced and worldly and the way the younger man makes her feel energetic and young is told with mesmerizing prose by Bradbury. His imagination and facility with language were tailor-made for the magazine format and while the book struggles to gel, I did enjoy reading it.

Length: 78,792 words

[Johann (jobis89) · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I’m one of them.”

A magical, timeless summer in the life of a twelve-year-old boy named Douglas Spaulding.

Forewarning: this review might just be a series of fangirling comments with no real structure or order.

Halfway between being a novel and a series of vignettes, Dandelion Wine is Bradbury’s ode to summer - and if you know me at all, I kinda hate that season. And yet somehow Bradbury had me brimming with nostalgia for childhood summers when it seemed like anything was possible and that summer might just last forever. *wipes tear away*

In some ways I would compare this to Robert McCammon’s Boy’s Life, there are a lot of similar themes and it gave me that same feeling of magic - that magical realism where you can’t tell what is real and what is simply a young boy’s imagination. The descriptions and prose are mesmerising, you can almost smell, hear and see summer. And any book that evokes nostalgia for childhood memories is a winner in my eyes.

Surprisingly, one of the creepiest and most unsettling passages I’ve ever read was in here too! It really played on one of my biggest fears - a murderer following you home or trying to get into your house. I got goosebumps as Bradbury turned up the tension and really set me on edge.

It’s a book that reminds you that you’re ALIVE - right here, right now- and yes, people will die, friends move away, seasons end, but there’s always magic to be discovered in little everyday things. Does this also sound like another one of my favourite books?? The Thief of Always perhaps?? I think this type of story is really my favourite.

Already marking this one as one of my favourite books of the year. How I would love to spend my summer in Green Town.

5/5. (Because I can’t give five thousand!)

This book is so amazing that it made a summer-hater actually start to appreciate summer... and it also made her nostalgic for childhood summers. Bradbury just has this insane ability to convey emotions and settings. Will certainly be one of my fave books of the year!

Update: Reread in May 2020. Remains one of my favourite books of all-time!

[Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Damn it! I just knew I would love this book. That’s what I get for thinking.
And almost everyone loves it. Oh well!

Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾

[Magrat Ajostiernos · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mis libros favoritos DE CABEZA.
Un libro que reflexiona sobre tantos temas bajo esa capa de verano, calor y la cotidianidad rota por una magia extraña que irrumpe en la vida de unos vecinos...
Es de esos libros para leer poco a poco, te obliga a parar y detenerte en cada historia de ese pueblecillo, con cada personaje y reflexión, habla de la vida y de la muerte, de la locura en la que vivimos, obsesionados por aprovechar el tiempo perdiéndonos lo importante de lo que nos rodea, corriendo de un lado a otro sin pararnos ni un segundo simplemente a pensar.
Hay aquí una historia de amor imaginada preciosa, un anciano que ve la vida a través del teléfono, una máquina de felicidad que trae la infelicidad...
No puedo explicar lo que he disfrutado y aprendido con él, me parece una de esas lecturas especialmente importantes hoy, imbuidos como estamos por la tecnología, por el "hacerlo todo y hacerlo ya", sin dejar paso ni a un minuto de pensamiento... en este momento en que los libros se consumen (y publican) como la comida basura, esta historia te obliga a detenerte y valorar todo lo que se nos escapa sin darnos cuenta.

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

You want to see the real Happiness Machine? The one they patented a couple thousand years ago, it still runs, not good, all the time, no! but it runs. It's been here all along.
Dandelion Wine ~~ Ray Bradbury



Uncork and inhale slowly ...

[Andy Marr · Rating 4 out of 5]

SO much better than Fahrenheit Thingy-Bobby.

[Cecily · Rating 4 out of 5]

“This book… is a gathering of dandelions… I was gathering images all my life, storing them away, and forgetting them… I had to send myself back, with words as catalysts, to open the memories out.”

It is a loosely autobiographical collection of characters and anecdotes told by an omniscient narrator, focusing on two brothers, though there are episodes that don’t involve them: Douglas (12) is imaginative, impulsive, and dreamy, whereas Tom (10) is practical, sceptical, and analytical.

It is a delightful evocation of summer in a small town in northern Illinois: treasuring traditions, ambivalence about change, and all the fun, disappointments, and confusion of childhood: longing for new sneakers; fascination tinged with fear about the Ravine; friendships made and broken; solitary townsfolk who may be up to something; dread of “The Lonely One”; passion for trolleys (trams), trains, and machinery; the special relationship with grandparents; unusual combinations of ice-cream flavours; the love of stories, and learning to pay good deeds forward.

My only slight reservation is that sometimes the children felt too naïve for their age (girls of ten who couldn’t believe an old lady had ever been ten), and other times too wise (Doug and Tom are very philosophical and profound). I guess children were different in 1928.

There are many details I want to remember, especially the most beautiful sort of time machine, but to write them down might break the spell of something as delicate and ephemeral as a dandelion clock. I’ve compromised and hidden them in spoiler tags.


Image: A dandelion clock, with most of seeds gone, by Katarzyna Kawka (Source)

Fanciful machines


The Green Machine
It just seems to be a small electric vehicle, like a golf buggy. Ahead of its time, but lacking the alluring shine and smoke of trains and trolleys.

The Happiness Machine
An eight-foot tall orange box, filled with images to make you happy. But the joy of seeing lots of beautiful things you haven’t got or done, and never will, is overtaken by sadness, whereas a sunset’s beauty lies partly in its transience. Nevertheless, I use Instagram in a similar way: I follow only sources of beauty (art galleries, artists, museums, sculptors, antiquities, architecture, national parks, owls, puffins, and penguins).

The Time Machine
The most beautiful idea in the book, and so true. The boys are excited to learn that old Colonel Freeleigh has a time machine. It turns out he is the time machine: a fantastic raconteur who holds the boys spellbound.
His secret sadness is another form of time travel: he makes regular, expensive, long-distance phone calls to an acquaintance in Mexico City just to hear the sounds of the place again.



Time of change


“‘Every year the same things, same way, no change, no difference. That’s one half of summer, Tom.
‘What’s the other half?’
‘Things we do for the first time ever.’”

Most of the main characters are very old (deaths occur) or youngish, and time is a recurring theme - though the dandelions of the title are mentioned in the context of lawns and wine, but not clocks.

“If you ran, time ran… The only way to keep things slow was to watch a thing and do nothing.”

Doug, on the cusp of adolescence, is suddenly struck by the profound truth of the fact he’s alive. And thus, inevitably, of the weight of mortality.



Evil lurking?


The overall mood is carefree, but there’s a woman who may be a witch (there was one in my village too), a hit-and-run, the menacing atmosphere and sounds of the ravine, a well-meaning visitor who saps an old-woman’s confidence, a terrifying chase through the ravine at night, a strange scene involving a waxwork tarot-reader in a fairground, and a serial-killer.




Image: Waukegan (aka Green Town), Illinois, with trolley bus, in the 1920s or 1930s. Postcard by Lantern Press (Source)

See also

This book seems very different from his sci-fi, but awe at science and invention (there’s a time machine), along with poetic descriptions of nature, are typical Bradbury.

• The short story, The Playground, is set in the same fictionalised Green Town, which surprised me, as that’s much darker, and with a distinct supernatural element. See my review HERE.

• The Martian Chronicles is also a collection of (almost) separate incidents, and like Dandelion Wine, features fire balloons. See my review HERE.

Quotes

• “The wine was summer caught and stoppered.”

• “Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow.”

• “Other boys rushed by like a swarm of meteors, their gravity so huge they pulled Douglas away from Grandfather and Tom.”

• “I didn’t know old ladies had first names.” And they don’t believe she was ever ten years old.
• “I don’t mind being old, not really, but I do resent having my childhood taken away from me.”

• “She could see the children racing off… with her youth in their frosty fingers, invisible as air.”

• “The trolley… swooped downhill through intervals of odorous sunlight and vast acreages of shadow that smelled of toadstools… They slid whispering on meadows washed with wild sunflowers.”

• “A darning needle sewed along the air, stitching, restitching designs both golden and invisible.”

• “And then there is that day when all around, all around you hear the dropping of the apples, one by one, from the trees. At first it is one here and one there, and then it is three and then it is four and then nine and twenty, until the apples plummet like rain, fall like horse hoofs in the soft, darkening grass, and you are the last apple on the tree.”

• “The warm breath of summer night shimmering off the sun-baked sidewalk.”

• “She laid herself out like a fossil imprint under the snowing cool sheets of her bed and began to die.”

• “The sun did not rise, it overflowed.”

• “Some people turn sad awfully young.”

• “The first cool touch of autumn moved slowly through the town and there was a softening and the first gradual burning fever in every tree, a faint flush and coloring in the hills, and the color of lions in the wheat fields.”

[Велислав Върбанов · Rating 5 out of 5]

Обожавам Рей Бредбъри... Неговият поетичен изказ и пленителната атмосфера в книгите му всеки път успяват страшно силно да ме развълнуват! Изключително любими са ми мрачните му „хелоуински“ истории („Дървото на Вси светии“, „Нещо зло се задава“ и други), много харесвам култовата антиутопия „451 градуса по Фаренхайт“, както и отделни негови разкази... Обаче „Вино от глухарчета“ си остава най-специалната, за мен, творба на великия Бредбъри, носеща ми чиста читателска радост!





„Вземи лятото в ръка, налей си лято в чашата, в мъничка чашка, разбира се, в най-мъничката детска чашка; смени сезона в своята кръв, като повдигнеш чашата до устните и в тях излееш лято.“


„— Това, че мисля за него, че го забелязвам, то е новото. Човек прави разни неща и не обръща внимание. А сетне внезапно, оглеждаш се и изведнъж осъзнаваш какво правиш, и всъщност тогава е първият път, когато истински го правиш.“


„— Ще видиш, това ще е напълно безполезно — продължил беше мистър Бентли, отпивайки от чая си. — Колкото и да упорстваш да останеш онова, което си била, ти можеш да си единствено това, каквото си сега, на това място. Времето хипнотизира. Когато си деветгодишен, струва ти се, че винаги си бил на девет и всякога ще бъдеш. Когато си на трийсет, струва ти се, че всякога си бил закрепен на този светъл ръб на средната възраст. А станеш ли на седемдесет, винаги и завинаги си на седемдесет. Човек живее в настоящето, той е впримчен в своето младо „днес“ или в старото си „днеска“, но друго „днеска“ на този свят не съществува.“





Впечатленията ми от други творби на Рей Бредбъри :


„451 градуса по Фаренхайт“:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


„Нещо зло се задава“:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


„От прахта родени“:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


„Марсиански хроники“:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


„Париж завинаги“:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


„Гръмна гръм“:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


„Убиецо, върни се!“:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


„Дървото на Вси Светии“:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


„Зелени сенки, бял кит“:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[mark monday · Rating 5 out of 5]

¡apparently my 1,000th rating! I should be stoked at the milestone I guess, but I was really digging how that 999 looked under my avatar. maybe I should go back and un-rate something and then just keep doing that as needed.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sure, it's overly sentimental and largely ignores the social problems of the time depicted, but when you're 12 years old in small-town America, there are no social problems. There are only problems regarding the new pair of tennis shoes you want, the creepy guy who hangs out in the ravine, the desire to live forever, to be young forever, to build the perfect happiness machine. Besides, Bradbury's writing is so rich it practically drips, much like biting into a perfectly ripe peach in August.

[Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recently while moving bookcases, books and furniture around, I came across my copy of Dandelion Wine .

I had read it once, years ago, during my own personal Golden Age of Science Fiction, ages 8 to 16. Now was a good time as any to revisit this novel. Bradbury had been marked, incorrectly, in my mind as a sci-fi writer on the same level as Heinlein or Asimov.

He's not a hard core, I, Robot type of sci-fi writer, really. More like a fantasy writer who touched on sci-fi themes.

And, he's in his own league. There haven't been many authors like Bradbury, heart of a poet, imagination as great as any, and a style that is both comfortable and familiar to the reader and yet is still unique.

Dandelion Wine is in my opinion the most 'poetical' of anything I've read by him.

It's a pean to childhood joys and fears, a story of the rite of passage from young child to a more aware young man. The town, fictional, of Green Town is a nod to Bradbury's real home town of Waukegan, Illinois, as seen from the eyes of Douglas Spaulding, a 12 year old boy learning he is alive and mortal all in one summer.

The novel is a series of short stories about the town and its people, told mostly through Douglas or his younger brother, Tom. The Happiness Machine, the Green Machine, the old tarot witch, friends moving away, old ways coming to an end, new ways being noticed, and sometimes an old way being restored, death and life, all parade past on the pages of this luminous novel.

The Summer of 1928 is perfectly bottled and stored in the cellar, just waiting for someone to come down, open the cap, and breathe deep of the golden light, and let the feelings play around like incandescent beetles scattering in the bright summer sun.

It is nostalgic without being maudlin or self pitying. It is magical without being vulgar and ostentatious. It bobs and weaves around the darkness and light of being alive, of being young or old and, always at the center, of being human.

Bradbury is a master storyteller. He is at the top of his game as he casts a spell about the rite of passage for Douglas as he progresses from a simple child to be a more complex and self-reflecting young man.

I really can't give this book enough praise. It's delightful and thought-provoking. The themes are all known, but they are expressed with such skill and care that they don't feel old. Rather like the streets around your home after a spring rain. You know them, yes, but they are refreshed and clean.

I encourage you to get a copy and read it.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I confess that I have never tasted dandelion wine. In fact, I have never seen any golden bottles of this summer magic arranged on a cellar shelf awaiting the right time for sampling. I wasn’t around in 1928, but I am lucky enough have experienced the magic of a childhood summer in a world where helping Grandpa bottle wine would easily have been someone’s ritual.

At the beginning, this seemed as if it might be just a collection of vignettes that might not tie together well enough to classify as a novel, but by the end, I had decided it was much more cohesive than I had anticipated. I loved the way the stories almost mirrored the mind of the twelve year old, Douglas Spaulding, whose summer we are invited to share. Every day is a new adventure when you are twelve and have a true degree of freedom, so every chapter represents another piece of an adventure puzzle for me.

Sitting on the summer-night porch was so good, so easy and so reassuring that it could never be done away with. These were rituals that were right and lasting; the lighting of pipes, the pale hands that moed knitting needles in the dimness, the eating of foil-wrapped, chilled Eskimo Pies, the coming and going of all the people.

I was there immediately. I knew times when summer's arrival was marked by iced tea replacing coffee. Once every summer, when I was a child, my mother would make homemade ice cream. We would take turns turning the handle and wait for what seemed forever for it to set enough to be spooned out into bowls and devoured. Nothing you buy in a store even comes close.

Ray Bradbury whisked me back to that world that I had left behind me for so long.

There was a smell of rain. Mother was ironing and sprinkling water from a corked ketchup bottle over the crackling dry clothes behind Tom.

I smiled at this reference to sprinkler bottles...everyone I knew owned one; no one ironed without one.

The smells and wonder of Doug's Grandma's kitchen made me think of my own grandmother, who always had something delectable sitting on the table and whose cornbread was as delicious as any cake you will ever eat.

Along with all these precious memories, there are words of wisdom, like these:

When you’re seventeen you know everything. When you’re twenty-seven if you still know everything you’re still seventeen.

I’d hate to admit how many people I know who are perpetually seventeen.

Also, Bradbury gives us glimpses into the varieties of people who make up our world--not just the children, but also the very old, who are just as genuinely painted as their younger counterparts.

”Some people turn sad awfully young,” he said. “No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world.

Bradbury’s prose is lyrical, his descriptions are transporting, he captures the magic of adolescence and makes us wonder if we have, in fact, been treated to some magic of a more concrete kind or just the magic that exists in the mind of the young and uncorrupted.

A lot happens during this fictional summer, and as Doug and his younger brother Tom lament its loss and project to the next summer, which seems so far away, I could not help thinking how quickly these boys will lose their innocence, their freedom, their world, and be left with only the memories of summers like this one, time with Grandpa, and the bottling of dandelion wine.

[Gabrielle (Reading Rampage) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book, I was reminded of a summer evening many years ago, when I was in 6th grade: my best friend and I were at the park around the corner from my house, sitting on the swings of the playground. It was a bit after sunset, and we weren't paying attention to the clouds, so we were a bit surprised when it started raining, but we kept on laughing and swinging as high as we could in that summer rain, until we were both drenched to the bone and finally ran back to my house, where my mother dried us off and made us mint tea. It doesn't sound like much of an anecdote, I know, but I recall how it felt to be on the swing, throwing my feet up as high as I could, as if I wanted to launch myself skyward, and the feeling of both carelessness and slight creeping dread; as if I'd known in a part of my brain that this intoxicating feeling of "who cares if we get wet, who cares what time it is?" could only last so long before there were chores to be done, and school started again. That was really my first taste of the bittersweet reality that summer does, in fact, end. And so does that slice of life when you don't have to worry about anything.

My copy of "Dandelion Wine" is a used bookstore treasure: printed in 1969, it is in near perfect condition and has that intoxicating old book smell that I would get drunk on if I could. And this novel is so full of lyricism, whimsy and nostalgia that I dare you not to feel a bit drunk when you are done with it (go ahead, I'll wait). But like a good wine or scotch, it must be enjoyed slowly: let the words swirl around in your head a minute before you flip the page.

Most of what happens in the summer of 1929, in Green Town, Illinois, is seen through the eyes of 12 years old Douglas Spaulding - or the eyes of some people he sees every day. And to be fair, nothing much happens: there's no action, no grand romance or mystery - though there might be a serial killer on the loose. It's just the encapsulation of a summer long gone-by. You read the small, episodic chapters and you can almost see the gold and green light of the season, the glittering of fireflies at night and the smell of freshly mowed lawn.

Happiness Machines will never work, because everything ends, old ladies were never little girls because there's no such thing as the past, and yet some old people are Time Machines... But what Douglas really learns that summer is the simple and universal finality of life, and while that seems rather obvious to adult eyes, nothing makes one grow up faster than understanding that they too, will die someday. Sometimes, it takes a life time to make peace with that idea...

Every page of this book could be quoted for its, beautiful, intensely wistful prose. It grabbed me by the feels and didn't let me go until the very last page, though I did take a break to get some tissues after finishing the chapters devoted to Miss Loomis and William Forrester. It is an absolutely gorgeous read, best kept for a lovely summer day. Highly recommended.

And of course, because it is a Bradbury book, I must leave you with this masterpiece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IxO...

[Theo Logos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dandelion Wine is a tonic. It’s choke full of the stuff of life, and it's good for what ails you.
You should read it when you are young to get a jump start on wisdom.
You should read it when you're old, to remember the simple joys of childhood.
You should read it in the summer to accentuate the long day glory of that season.
You should read it in the winter to warm yourself with the memory of the glorious summer through long winter nights.
You should read it in good times and take joy in its celebration of life.
You should read it in bad times to be reminded that loss and aging and death and pain are part of the bargain too, not separate from life's joys.
You should read it over and over, many times in your life time.
You should read it.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have you ever checked into a hotel late at night, after a long day of driving, snuggled down in bed for some needed rest, and just as you close your weary eyes…

… the couple in the next room starts going at it with an intensity that shakes your headboard and fills your room with a cacophony of grunts, groans and caterwauls?

In this situation, you have few good options. You can knock on the wall, but that rarely, if ever, works. You can call the front desk, but that’s an awkward conversation. You can don earplugs and try to re-imagine the rhythmic thumping of your bed as magic fingers. Or, you can attempt a “contact high” arousal, which may feel good for a moment but is also guaranteed to make you feel like a skeeve.

Well, reading this book was like being in a hotel room next to Ray Bradbury as he vigorously fornicated with nostalgic memories of his own idyllic, youthful summers in small-town America during the 1950s. In no way did I feel brought into the metaphorical room of this story; I was just overhearing the ruckus through thin walls.

He switches back and forth between stream-of-conscious musings and short vignettes, and I had a hard time understanding the thought process connecting one to the other. The writing is sometimes impressionistic, like imagist poetry, and sometimes it's very straightforward. The result, for me, was a disconcerting sort of muddle.

Honestly, I feel terrible saying this, because I love Ray Bradbury to fan-girl level proportions. And there are some incredibly tender scenes in this book that moved me deeply (“contact high” is always an option, remember?).

For example, in the sixth chapter, a simple description of a new pair of summer sneakers made me cry in public, which both surprised and embarrassed me a little:

Feel those shoes, Mr. Sanderson? Feel how fast they’d take me? All those springs inside, feel all the running inside, feel how they kind of grab hold and can’t let you alone and don’t like you just standing there?

My favorite vignette in the book centers on Leo Auffmann’s invention of a happiness machine, and his wife’s unexpectedly negative response to it. I don’t want to make a spoiler, so I’ll just say this is a very warm, very tender reflection on what it means to be truly happy. It’s also one of the few speculative, SciFi storylines in the book, with sparkly touches of magical realism.

But even with these (and many, many more) tender moments, and with Bradbury’s uncanny ability to evoke emotion through vivid word pictures, I was so, so bored and irritated for most of this novel. Like, I had to give myself actual pep talks (it’s November, missy, and you’ve got a 52- book challenge deadline to meet) to make myself keep reading each day.

I totally respect any reader who’s given this book five stars, because this is Bradbury, and the writing - the imagery, the sensory immersion - is so good. But I personally felt like an outsider through most of this book, instead of someone brought directly into the room of the writer’s imagination.

So, I’m giving it a stingy three stars.

Thanks to Shawn, who mentioned this book to me while being upfront about his own 3-star rating. Really, I’m not sorry I read it, because it let me see - or rather, overhear Bradbury vigorously getting down with - the nostalgic 50s of his youth. I may read it again in a few years, with adjusted expectations.

Book/Song Pairing: Train to Nowhere (The Champs)

[Diane Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are looking for science fiction because it's Ray Bradbury, or a logical straightforward plot, or a book like all the others that you usually read, leave this one alone.

If you want magic between the covers once you start turning pages, then by all means open these doors. If you want beautiful prose (" the bee-fried air", bee-fried air, for Pete's sake!)
that captures a summer in 1928, that takes you inside the mind and imagination of Douglas and Tom Spaulding, 12 and 10 years old, here you go. If you need some lovely practicality, there's plenty from Grandma and Grandpa and Great Grandma too. Philosophy, time travel just from listening to elderly people, magic spells and potions that may or may not work, but who cares, it's all included in these pages.

This book made me happy. What more can you ask?

[Char · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once I realized there wasn't going to be a plot, but instead a loosely connected set of vignettes about boys coming of age, I relaxed and enjoyed DANDELION WINE. I marked several pages that I wanted to quote in my review, but now find myself thinking that reviewing it is going to take some of the magic out of it for me.

I absolutely adored the end, (Aunt Rose got sent packing!), and there's no doubt that this book is steeped in nostalgia, but overall, it was a little too wordy for me. I would have liked fewer pages of solid text and more dialogue, but hey, this is Ray Bradbury and I love the guy, however- I think The October Country is still my favorite of all his works.

Lastly, much as I love Ray Bradbury, I still hold Robert McCammon's BOY'S LIFE as my favorite novel of all time.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine is a chronological series of vignettes and short stories that recounts the summer of 1928 in a small Illinois town mostly through the eyes of twelve year-old Douglas Spaulding.

Can you close your eyes and recapture the smells, sounds, sights, and feel of summer? Do you remember that sense of freedom the first morning after school ended, bounding out of bed and heading out to run the neighborhood with your friends? I have so much sadness for the current generation of children who are tethered to their technological screens/phones and who don't have the free agency to explore their small worlds.

One of the ideas that captured me in this work is the juxtaposition of the theme of letting go of the past to savor the present with the theme of honoring what has gone before and replacing it with caution. Bradbury touches on many other themes which have come up in my recent reads including love of family, the futility of war, grief, the rights of elders, and death. There is so much I can relate to throughout these pages. I enjoy all of the stories here and appreciate seeing Douglas mature intellectually and emotionally, how he wakes up to being alive and grows into the idea of his own mortality.

Bradbury's prose is sublime, his writing sensuous and lyrical. His writing can also be scary and quite suspenseful. Remember the thrill of telling stories in the dark? He had me on the edge of my seat the entire way through "The Lonely One."

For me, this was a perfect compilation. If you, like me, have managed to miss this one so far, I suggest that this is a good time to rectify this omission. Pick up a copy soon.

Publication 1956

[Antoinette · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a sweet indulgence. I don’t think there is anything that compares to being a kid and off for the summer. This book brought back memories of my long ago summers- not in 1928 as this book, but in the 1960’s. The freedom of just running out and joining up with all the neighbour kids and planning our day. Just making our own fun.

The boys in this book experienced traditions- making dandelion wine. They used their imaginations; they learned that sometimes best friends move; they learned that loved ones died; they learned the wisdom and stories of the older folks. It was a joy to experience their summer along with them.

Reading this book brought to mind a song I loved to hear in the 60’s.- not dandelion wine but summer wine.

“Strawberries, cherries and an angel’s kiss in spring
My summer wine is really made from all these things
Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time
And I will give to you summer wine
Oh, oh summer wine.”

By Nancy Sinatra, Lee Hazelwood 1966.

Summer is the perfect time to read this book!

4.5 Stars

Published: 1957

[Apatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let’s get one thing clear Dandelion Wine is not science fiction, it is not exactly fantasy either, though there is some element of magic realism to it. So if you are a fan of Ray Bradbury’s sci-fi books like Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, or his fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes, and you are looking for more in that fantastical vein, Dandelion Wine may disappoint you. The best mental preparation is to forget about genre and just let Bradbury tell his story in that uniquely beautiful way he does.

“Somehow the people who made tennis shoes knew what boys needed and wanted. They put marshmallows and coiled springs in the soles and they wove the rest out of grasses bleached and fired in the wilderness. Somewhere deep in the soft loam of the shoes the thin hard sinews of the buck deer were hidden. The people that made the shoes must have watched a lot of winds blow the trees and a lot of rivers going down to the lakes. Whatever it was, it was in the shoes, and it was summer.”

If one adjective can describe Dandelion Wine it would be “whimsical”. This book is not really about anything, but in some ways, it is also about everything. On the surface it does not seem to be about anything because nothing particularly dramatic, strange or exciting happen in it. At the same time, looking at it another way, it seems to be about everything in so far as it covers a wide spectrum of the human experience; growing up, growing old, making friends, losing friends, acceptance of old age and of death etc.

While Dandelion Wine is a novel, not an anthology, it is episodic in structure and reads a little like an interrelated collection of short stories. That said it seems more cohesive as a novel than The Martian Chronicles; perhaps because it features one central character, twelve year old Douglas Spaulding. Most of the novel is seen through his eyes though there are parts where other characters briefly take centre stage as protagonists. The story is set in Green Town, Illinois in the summer of 1928 where brand spanking new tennis shoes seem to have a life of their own when you put them on, where a man constructs a Happiness Machine that almost works, where a time machine sort of exists and many other magical things occur which are only magical if you look at them the right way.

The most memorable chapter deals with a serial killer called The Lonely One and his creepy stalking of a girl who may be too brave for her own good. If this sounds like some James Patterson style nastiness it really is not, the brief episode is atmospheric and almost scary but done in the best possible taste. I also love the poignant story about a pair of “star-crossed lovers”, one born too early, the other too late; and the story of an old lady who learns to accept her age through some annoying meddling kids. The coming of age stories of Douglas Spaulding and his brother are charming but they did not really grab me as my childhood was nothing like theirs.

As always Bradbury’s prose manages to be highly lyrical without any inclusion of highfalutin words that would have you reaching for the dictionary. This is the sort of book to curl up with and read at a leisurely pace. At less than 300 pages you could read it in a day or two but this is not a book to simply plow through. You would get more from it if you relax, soak in the atmosphere and the nostalgia, perhaps pausing now and then to reflect on episodes of your life that the book reminds you of. My only criticism of Dandelion Wine is that it may be too nice, sweet and gentle for my taste (serial killer notwithstanding).

Dandelion Wine is said to be the first volume of Bradbury’s "Green Town” series, where Something Wicked This Way Comes is the second volume, followed by a couple more volumes which I have not read. Something Wicked This Way Comes is my favorite Bradbury book but it is an overt fantasy book and does not seem to be connected to Dandelion Wine in any way except for the setting.

In any case, although Dandelion Wine is not my favorite Bradbury it is a pleasant enough reading experience that puts me in a good mood. Definitely, time well spent.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered."

“I want to feel all there is to feel, he thought. Let me feel tired, now, let me feel tired. I mustn't forget, I'm alive, I know I'm alive, I mustn't forget it tonight or tomorrow or the day after that.”

Doug (12) and Tom (10) Spaulding live in Green Town, Illinois. Bradbury published this book in 1957, though you can see why this became popular in the late sixties, celebrating summer and nature as it does. As Bradbury says in an introduction to a later edition, “Green Town. Waukegan. Byzantium.” For an Illinois reader as I am now, it feels very much like an Illinois book, situated as it is in a small town on Lake Michigan. As I began the book, a reread after decades of separation, it felt romanticized and sentimental, compared to my teenaged reading of it, which was just celebratory, as I seem to recall. It certainly is nostalgic, which as a much older man I appreciate more than I would have earlier in my life. Rereading the early chapters made me want to write my own book about, say, my own summer of 1965. I was annoyed at times by some of Bradbury’s romantic writing along the lines of “Somewhere, a bird whistled,” “Somewhere, a dog barked” and sort of stereotypical assumptions about how all American small towns are alike in their apparent homogeneity. But on the whole I liked these early chapters quite a bit.

“It was the face of spring, it was the face of summer, it was the warmness of clover breath. Pomegranate glowed in her lips, and the noon sky in her eyes. To touch her face was that always new experience of opening your window one December morning, early, and putting out your hand to the first white cool powdering of snow that had come, silently, with no announcement, in the night. And all of this, this breath-warmness and plum-tenderness was held forever in one miracle of photographic is chemistry which no clock winds could blow upon to change one hour or one second; this fine first cool white snow would never melt, but live a thousand summers.”

The book is episodic, a series of autobiographically fictional vignettes based on Bradbury’s Waukegan 1928 life, which is not to say it doesn’t develop and grow as a narrative of Doug’s coming of age summer. One incident I like has to do with the almost ecstatic memory of wearing new sneakers on a sunny day. They’re magic, as we see many things are in this summer. Which is to say that several things operate as what would now be called magic realism.

Early themes established include the importance of memory, of course; youth vs. adulthood/old age (some kids talk to an old woman, 95, who shows them pictures when she was a young girl; the young kids don’t believe she was ever young!); spirituality, imagination, and--a Bradbury staple--the importance of being human in the often dehumanizing world of technology.

I was completely seduced by the book just at the point the fantasy—the magical realism--turns dark, which is an important part of Doug’s coming of age, of course. The Ravine, Mr. Lonely (who kills young women), and the Tarot Witch from the Penny Arcade, all these loom ever larger as the summer proceeds. The specter of death is everywhere, as Grandmother dies, a young woman is killed, and as Doug himself gets very ill at one point.

Doug has a realization: "So if trolleys and runabouts and friends can go away for a while or go away forever, or rust, or fall part and die, and if people can be murdered, and if someone like great-grandma, who was going to live forever, can die. . . if all of this is true. . . Then I Douglas Spaulding must also . . ."

In the end, Doug still has fireflies and cicadas and starry nights and long conversations in the dark with family and friends. “Praying mantises, zeppelins, acrobats, sword swallowers!” But there is now the specter of death that is present in a way it had not been before. There remains over all a kind of sweet celebration of Doug’s twelfth summer, for any youthful summer, which I also had, which I hope you also had. It’s more special for me this year because I have kids that age (12, 11, 10) who had their own joyous (and thankfully not very dark) summer.

It kind of reminded me of the nostalgic horror fantasy of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane. I bet Gaiman owes something to Bradbury in this book, not the least a deep sense of the human and a meditation on the passage of time and memory, all within the context of fantasy/horror/magic.

The sequel, which I recently read, is Something Wicked This Ways Comes, which ups the darkness quotient. Goodreads friend Michael Jandrok says one should read Dandelion Wine, a meditation on summer, and summer's (childhood's) end, every September. Wicked is Bradbury's Halloween book, to be read maybe every October.

Dandelion Wine Recipe:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/162202/d...

[Sr3yas · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Dandelion Wine.... The words were summer on the tongue".

We all love to travel, one way or another. That's why we read! To experience time; To experience new worlds; To experience...

And sometimes, we find those peculiar time machines that take us to somewhere special. Let's say, a reminiscent of nostalgic childhood. That one is always special. My favorite in that category are To Kill a Mockingbird and Malgudi Days

Now I have Dandelion Wine... And It is different from all these books!

In Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury welcomes us to Summer of 1928 in the fictional world of Green town. We are introduced to Douglas, a 12-year-old boy, and his brother Tom, a 10-year-old. We follow them through an array of loosely connected stories of summer of '28. The kind of stories that just don't happen in our world anymore. A kid finding himself as he understands that he is alive and his reaction as he understands the unfairness of life and death; A family man trying to create a happiness machine; An elderly woman trying to convince the young children that she was young once too... So many beautiful stories.

This work is considered as Bradbury's most personal work as the stories presented in here are a blend of his own childhood and imagination. This wicked concoction produces a world of magical realism, wonder, innocence and pure imagination.

This is a unique work that touches multiple genres and a multitude of philosophy through the eyes of children. Well, they are not the regular children you find in fiction. They are the thoughtful kind of children. I never knew there were thoughtful children like these in the world!

Highly recommended. Especially if you like lyrical prose, coming of age stories or/and the movie Big Fish (2003)

Oh, wait. There is also a serial killer lurking somewhere in the town. Needless to say, summer of '28 was very eventful.

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First Update
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Sometimes, there might just be a story behind how a particular book gets into your radar. Dandelion Wine has such a story to tell!

Back in 2015, I was catching up with some of my dreadful assignments and tasks which took hours to complete. I was exhausted by the end of the session, but not at all sleepy (I deduce that it was all the coffee that did the trick). So I decided to watch a movie to kill some time. And the movie was Age of Adaline.

Oddly enough, I liked the movie. And there was this one particular scene that really caught my attention.


I am not a romantic, but I adore this scene. It also created a mental TBR for me. My own personal "Flower Trilogy".

And Dandelion wine came to me first.

I don't have a book review right now. This......this book is something else. I might need days involving hours of wall staring to fully comprehend what I've just read.

But I will tell you this, Dandelion wine is so damn beautiful.