Really quick, seasonally appropriate read. Some of the trippier Bradbury fare. A lot of the plot appears to be metaphorical, but the line between what's literal and what's symbolic is a blurry one, if so.

Ultimately, it's a bittersweet tale of growing up and growing old, written by a master storyteller. It's the follow-up to Dandelion Wine, so, if you read that and liked it, make sure to read this, too.

4.5 stars

"The huge round lunar clock was a gristmill. Shake down all the grains of Time - the big grains of centuries, the small grains or years, and the tiny grains of hours and minutes - and the clock pulverized them, slid Time silently out in all directions in a fine pollen, carried by cold winds to blanket the town like dust, everywhere"

It has taken me awhile to get around to writing this review for Farewell Summer. I think it has a lot to do with me not wanting to say goodbye. Don't misunderstand me, I am more than excited to say goodbye to summer, I'm just not quite ready to let Farewell Summer go. I'm not ready to close the book on Douglas and Tom Spaulding, on Green Town, Illinois, on a piece of childhood. While I absolutely adored Dandelion Wine, I only loved Farewell Summer. It was such a great book but it didn't quite reach the heights of Dandelion Wine. Farewell Summer, like the name suggests, is a farewell, a final love letter to summer vacation and also to childhood. This story brings us right back to Green Town, IL, back to Doug and Tom (and Grandpa who is my favorite character in the entire book. I could go on for pages why he just steals the show) but the scene is slightly different. The heat and sun and dandelions of summer have moved on and made room for the "flowered flakes and railroad track together turned to moulderings upon the rim of autumn." The temperature is still warm but there's a feeling in the air that things are moving onto the next stage in life. Time has begun to move again.

Bradbury is the master of prose. Every word evokes a feeling. Even when he described something as mundane as Grandma baking bread, I could physically smell the yeast in the air from the rising bread. He made me yearn to be in that kitchen with Grandma. I yearned for this simpler time I've never actually known. Bradbury packs so many emotions into so few pages but nothing gets confused or watered down. I do not love summer yet seeing it end through Doug's eyes recalled my own memories and a sense of dread and freedom ending as the school year inched closer.

The story itself is pretty simple in plot - Doug and his young friends wage war against the old men on the school board. They vow to each other they will never grow old. The old men retaliate because they have forgotten their youth. Grandpa is the "old man ambassador", he sees both sides of the situation because he still remembers what it means to be young. And if I can be half as loving and wise as Grandpa in my later years, I will consider my life well lived. There was a scene at the end of the book that kind of blindsided me. I understand what Bradbury was doing. I understand and appreciate the sentiment since it's integral to the story as a whole, it was just surprising. I do wish he had used different symbolism.

This book was much more melancholy and bittersweet than Dandelion Wine. In this book we see the invincibility all kids feel during childhood summers pass away like leaves falling from trees. The passage of time is actually felt. Time starts again after it stood still for those six golden weeks. Farewell Summer forces the reader to face his own mortality. The passing of time is inescapable, we all will grow old just as surely as the last dandelion of summer will wilt and blow away on the autumn wind. However, Farewell Summer is not so bleak, it is not all death and passing away; on the flip side of the coin it's also a beautiful reminder that as long as you are moving, there is breath in your lungs, you are living and there are things to enjoy.

"Life gives us everything. Then it takes it away. Youth, love, happiness, friends. Darkness gets it all in the end. We didn't have enough sense to know you can will it - life - to others. Your looks, your youth. Pass it on, give it away. It's lent to us for only a while. Use it, let go without crying."

"Нам не вистачило кмітливості, щоб зрозуміти: своє життя можна продовжити в інших."

This is one of the many books on my list to read that I know I will never reach so I'm supplementing some on audio.

This is a mock dreamlike fantasy tale of kids versus very old men in a small American town. The boys don't want to age and therefore lose their youth and the old men want to keep experiencing emotions through the faculties of the young.

Poignant with poetic descriptions yet some might argue not a lot is happening and the final resolution ends at a low.

Robert Fass does a good job with the many voices, especially those of the kids. BBC Audiobooks America put this album together.

OVERALL GRADE: B minus to B.

Not great. The publisher who originally insisted that this material be excised from dandelion wine made the right call.

I am an avid library patron and very seldom do I purchase books for myself. This book may be a rare purchase of mine.

Only Bradbury can write a novel like this!!!
Captivating, vibrant and entrancing from the first page on..

Of course it's the sequel to "Dandelion Wine", and it has taken him more than 50 years to write it..
Let me say that Bradbury is indeed a master story teller, and in his craft unsurpassed to the very day!!
Further I want to declare that although it's a quiet novel, I coudn't put it down..

It's so beautifully written, like poetry, Bradbury himself has declared that he is indeed a poet..
The prose in "Farewell Summer" that Bradbury exhibits, is pregnant with heavy feelings and sparkle with life and optimism;

In "Farewell Summer" Bradbury deals with important themes like what it means to grow up, then the first kiss and also old age..

Death and life, in a small city..
The freshness of being young, and the maturity of a long life by the old people..
Douglas Spaulding and his friends in the midst of a war with the old-timer..
Full of adventures and pranks!!!

It's a novel with an important message to all of us!!!
How short and volatile youth are, what it means to become grown up..
And also the preciousness of life itself!!
It was a pleasure to read it..

And Bradbury himself is in love with life, if you read his novels this is a contagious matter and you yourself cannot avoid to fall in love too..
This is a novel about youthful spirits and old age, the endless cycle of birth and death, with his struggles and concepts..

Let us visit together Green Town, Illinois, and join the people living there!!!
A wonderful novel, full with magic and evocative of deep feelings and emotions, I recommend it to all my friends at goodreads with my whole soul and heart!!

Dean;)))

i know that this was originally supposed to be part of dandelion wine but i think it was unnecessary, dandelion wine stands fine as it is

Para leer este maravilloso libro y saborearlo, primero me tomé el tiempo para leer "El vino del estío", lo cual fué un nuevo gozo al revivir la máquina de la felicidad, la máquina del tiempo y saborear el helado de vainilla y limón. Ese primer verano donde Douglas vive la niñez y que ve tan lejana la vida adulta, pero con ese deseo de llegar a ella por esas maravillosas historias que ve en los "viejos". Ahora en este fin de verano, inicio de otoño, Douglas vive el paso de la niñez hacia la pubertad. La guerra que se entabla entre Douglas y sus amigos que odian a los "viejos" porque representan aquello que no les agradaría llegar a ser, y por la otra parte la rebeldía de los "viejos" que envidian a esos jovenes poseedores de toda la fuerza y vitalidad que ellos a lo largo de la vida han perdido. El choque que marca el conocimiento y aceptación de ambos bandos es la chispa que enciende amistades y compañías que enriquecerán a las dos partes. Douglas vive muy de cerca la muerte, la culpa, el peligro y conoce el primer amor, y es cuando la cercanía de esos viejos lo llevan a salvarse y saborear cada momento. Dos libros que releeré muchas veces más.

I never expected a Ray Bradbury novel to end with the two main characters talking to their dicks, but here we are.

What a wild, uniquely Bradbury work of art. No one could make poetry like him.

Dandelion Wine. What a book to get drunk on. What a book to fill your brain, unrelentingly, with beauty on every single page.

What we have here isn't so much a sequel as a sip. Not a ton of plot, not too many characters. Maybe it's not Dandelion Wine, but it's also not as long. It's Ray Bradbury, and his writing is, to put it simply, perfect.
Douglas Spaulding, the wide-eyed hero of Dandelion Wine, is back. And he's still wondering. Why can't summer last forever? Why can't he cling to it forever? Why is he going to have to die? (You thought he came to terms with that in the last book, didn't you? Well, I guess nobody really comes to terms with that.)
The only solution, to him, is war. War with the old men of the village. And it's here that his mind totally snaps.

Who wouldn't want to be a general, especially of an army that fights for immortality?

Ray Bradbury's genius lies not only in giving meaning to a million words, but in giving one word the snap and crackle that such a book needs to survive ("metronome", anyone?) Doug's a wildly imaginative boy, and here it's played almost to the point of insanity. Leading the boys of the village on missions, his plans include: weaning his army off candy and soda (it'll make you old and rotten inside--"'You want root beer spit, to be poisoned forever, to never get well?'"), stealing the old men's chessboards (because the chess pieces represent the boys, and the old men are controlling them) and killing the courthouse clock (it represents time--"...the thing that bleached and ruined life, jerked people out of bed, hounded them to school and graves!") It's classic Douglas Spaulding logic, the stuff that rules an overly-imaginative childhood, and the other kids praise it in chorus. They don't want to get old either, after all.

And there's an angry old man fighting back. Quartermain. He knows a war when he sees one, and he's determined, with a logic that's somewhat similar to Doug's, to kill the youth of these kids. Because he's just like them--he fought the battle to keep his youth, and lost. He never got married, never had any children of his own.

It has to be read to be believed, the descriptions of everything--the candy shop, the birthday cake, the beautiful little girl who Douglas falls for, and in the end, Douglas and Quartermain sitting on a creaky old porch that shifts back and forth like a teeter-totter, having finally reached an "Appomattox," but unsure which of them is Lee and which is Grant. Douglas staring down the courthouse clock, and fearing it, is perhaps the best moment in the entire book: "At any moment the great machine might uncoil its brass springs, snatch him up, and dump him in a grinder of cogs to mesh its endless future with his blood, in a forest of teeth and tines, waiting, like a music box, to play and tune his body, ribboning his flesh."

There's a little bit of, well, weirdness at the end--actually, the whole book is weird--but I loved it. It's a haunting early autumn read.

I think this'll be a yearly thing for me. When summer comes again, I'll go read Dandelion Wine.