edited 5-20-21 I finished reading this in February but I still haven't stopped thinking about this amazing book. There is something special about a book when I keep thinking about it and how it just makes me smile! So, I am upgrading my rating from 4 to 5 stars! It's definitely worth it!

What was so magical about the summer when you were 12? What were the rituals you couldn’t wait for to happen? For me, it’s not so easy to remember that far back (35+ years ago!) any more. But I’m certain that my childhood dreams and desires were not what they are now. Reminiscing can be sad in a way when you’ve had many years of life to look back over. But wouldn’t it be great to be 12 again without a care in the world?

Ray Bradbury has given us a magical story about the imagination of a young boy captivated by the marvel and wonder of the first day of summer. This is the summer when Douglas Spaulding realizes he is alive and all he wants to do this summer is to feel all there is to feel.

It is summer and a time for a 12 year old boy to be free and independent and test boundaries and find magic. Douglas pretends as most 12 year olds will do and through this imagination he is able to turn the ordinary, everyday things into magic! I love the opening chapter scene where Douglas is allowed to stay over in his grandparent’s third floor cupola room which to him is like a turret in a castle. When morning comes, Douglas manipulates the stars and the lights of all the houses to turn on with a swish of his hands. He is the magician in control of waking up the town and turning on the day.
Douglas, conducting an orchestra, pointed to the eastern sky.

The world, like a great iris of an even more gigantic eye, which has also just opened and stretched out to encompass everything, stared back at him.

Douglas wants nothing more than to experience life fully and freely and to make sure that he doesn’t miss out on the most important bits, the rites of summer. The first one, and the most important, is picking the dandelions and then making the wine with grandpa.

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

And now that Douglas knew, he really knew he was alive, and moved turning through the world to touch and see it all, it was only right and proper that some of his new knowledge, some of this special vintage day would be sealed away for opening on a January day with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for weeks or months and perhaps some of the miracle by then forgotten and in need of renewal. Since this was going to be a summer of unguessed wonders, he wanted it all salvaged and leveled so that any time he wished, he might tiptoe down in this dank twilight and reach up his fingertips.
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.

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

Dandelion wine represents the power of memory and nostalgia - it is a way for the boys to have something physical to preserve the memories they will make all summer. They are meant to savor each memory.

I could go on and on describing the rites and discoveries of summer and the people of the town who help add uniqueness to this summer of being alive but it’s best to experience it for yourself. It is a world that is inhabited by the pure joy and thrill of boys (Douglas and his brother Tom, 10) and how they experience circumstances that are important to them in the summer of 1928. There is plenty of Bradbury’s trademark fantasy throughout. He does not simply give us a straightforward story about a wonderfully nostalgic summer. Concepts such as thinking that old people were never really young, that a happiness machine would make life better, and that people let you down are hard to learn. There is also a darker side he explores that will cause Douglas to wonder about the stability of life and that nothing stays the same forever, people grow up and life will come to an end.

My favorite stories were about grandma and great grandma. Bradbury’s prose is gorgeous and heartfelt. Seen through the eyes of Douglas, grandma was a wonder woman.

She was a woman with a broom or a dustpan or a washrag or a mixing spoon in her hand. You saw her cutting piecrust in the morning, humming to it, or you saw her setting out the baked pies at noon or taking them in, cool, at dusk.

She glided through the halls as steadily as a vacuum machine, seeking, finding, putting to rights.

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....

“Douglas sprawled back on the dry porch planks, completely contented and reassured by these voices, which would speak on through eternity, flow in a stream of murmurings over his body, over his closed eyelids, into his drowsy ears, for all time.”

Where do we get our sensibilities? It’s more complicated than nature/nurture. There must be layers of influences that combine with our proclivities and create our unique spirit.

Who would I have become if, when I was somewhere around the age of the main character of this story, my beloved brother had not snatched this book off the library shelf and handed it to me? Would I have had a deep, lifelong need to smell every rose in the bouquet, both literally and figuratively? Some books help to make us who we are, and I believe Ray Bradbury conspired with my brother and together they gave me this book to help make me who I am.

n  n (It was this paperback I read way back then. The cover is pure magic.)

When you’re young, you notice things: the way clouds move across the sky, the way the earth smells when you lay on the grass, the way grownups act that tells you things they don’t say. After a while, most of us stop noticing. But this book is a reminder.

It’s the story of 12-year-old Douglas Spaulding and his adventures during the summer of 1928. It’s full of nostalgic glimpses of days gone by. But it’s so much more. He experiences life and death and fear and loneliness. As the summer progresses, we learn along with Doug some of life’s most important lessons.

We begin to understand what Lena Auffmann finally got across to her husband Leo about the happiness machine Doug and his friends encouraged him to build. Look around. You don’t have to go back in time. You don’t have to travel to exotic places. It’s all here. Right now. If we just stop and appreciate it. It’s here for all of us.

Bradbury shows us how to look, see, appreciate and savor.

Right now there’s a slight scent of roses coming through my window on the breeze, I hear my husband hammering away on something in the garage, and feel my dog’s soft warm head resting on my slippered foot. Sometimes, heaven is right here if we only notice it. I learned that from this book.

And, as Douglas often says, “another thing I learned …” When you are young, a summer can be packed with so many, many things: life and loss and adventures and magic. There is no reason all of our summers, all of our seasons, no matter our age, can’t be packed and memorable like this, if we just pay attention.

When my time comes, I want to be able to think like Doug’s Great Grandma.

“I said it all in my time and my pride. I’ve tasted every victual and danced every dance; now there’s one last tart I haven’t bit on, one tune I haven’t whistled. But I’m not afraid. I’m truly curious. Death won’t get a crumb by my mouth I won’t keep and savor.”

Is this my favorite book? I put it to this test: I asked myself, “If I had to pick one book to memorize, as the characters do at the end of Bradbury’s Farenheit 451, would it be this one?” The more I thought about it, the more I knew. “Yes, oh yes! And I’ll begin right now.”

“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 …”

“Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.”

I recall reading this book at the start of summer one September, just as the book starts. It was a wonderfully colourful read - one that had a surging presence that sucked me into childhoods past and whet my appetite for the summer to come.

“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.”

The writing felt like flowers whirling around at my feet while I greedily slurped down my grandmother's lemonade; colourful, rich, ambient and so clear in my memory. Just like these crisp and fresh summers of a long gone childhood, I may not remember all that happened, but I certainly remember how wonderful and infinite I felt reading this.

“Lilacs on a bush are better than orchids. And dandelions and devil grass are better! Why? Because they bend you over and turn you away from all the people in the town for a little while and sweat you and get you down where you remember you got a nose again. And when you’re all to yourself that way, you’re really proud of yourself for a little while; you get to thinking things through, alone. 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.”

Our childhoods are like a Dandelion Wine - Sweet, warm and vibrant, but fleeting and easily wished away. Only now does the title resonate so warmly with me.



Courtesy of Jen's mini review

Zanosno i nostalgično delo Reja Bredberija o magičnom svetu posmatranom kroz prizmu dvanaestogodišnjeg dečaka u kritičnom periodu prelaska iz čednog doba u svet odraslih. Sreća je biti i ostati dete.

4+

"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.

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

Note, Jan 1, 2015: I've just updated this to correct a minor typo --a misspelling of the author's name in one place.

Bradbury is best remembered as a writer in the speculative genres, especially science fiction; but that wasn't all he wrote. This gem of American general fiction has no Martians or space ships, no vampires or ghosts; it's just the story of a typical summer in the life of a 12-year-old boy, growing up in a small town in Illinois in the 1920s. Bradbury (b. 1920) grew up in Waukegan, Illinois, north of Chicago, which serves as the model for Greentown, the setting of this novel and of some of his other fiction. Young Douglas Spaulding, our preteen protagonist here, also reappears in other Bradbury fiction, and is in many ways the author's own alter ego (Bradbury's middle name was Douglas, and his father's middle name was Spaulding). But for all its prosaic setting, ordinary events, and grounding in reality, Bradbury manages to infuse it with a profound sense of wonder and "magic" --not the magic of supernatural fiction, but the magic of a normal kid looking at a world that's full of excitement and possibilities, mystery and adventure, where the familiar doesn't mean humdrum. Adults tend to become jaded and lose much of this; but we don't automatically have to, just because we temper it with experience and wisdom. (Bradbury, who wrote this book the year he turned 37, apparently held on to much of it into his 90s; and that's part of the secret of his writing success.) Despite the child protagonist, this isn't really a book that would be most appreciated by kids, IMO; it's more one that's aimed at adults, who can approach it with an adult's perspective --and learn from it to adjust their perspective.

Primarily a writer of short fiction, Bradbury gives this novel a very episodic structure; and a few of the chapters actually appeared first as short stories, or were lifted out later and published as short stories. (As a kid, I read one in particular that way in an anthology, and didn't like it; but when I read it as part of the book, along with the following chapter that clarifies what really happened, the effect is 180 degrees different!). His trademark lyrical and evocative prose style, rich with details that appeal to all of the senses, is on display here too. The outward events can be deceptively simple; interpreted at a deep level, they're often rich with metaphor that expresses truths about life and the world. Not all of the book is sweetness and light; even the bucolic world of 1928 Greentown could hold the macabre and menacing that's part of reality, too (and one chapter very clearly brings out the human psychological need for scary mythology). But mostly, what we experience here is beautiful and wondrous.

Any reader younger than 86 was not yet born in the time when this book is set. It's not historical fiction, as such; but for most of us it evokes a world and way of life that's vanished into the past; and not all the changes have been for the better. (Contrary to the optimistic connotations ideologically-blinkered pundits invest it with, the word "progress" really just means "movement in some direction" --not always a good direction. :-( ) This is hammered home when we read episodes like Douglas' negotiation with a shoe store owner for a pair of sneakers; that kind of human interaction ain't gonna happen at your "(un)friendly" local mega-corporation super-store outlet. :-( But many of the events here, and all of the underlying human nature depicted, are timeless. This is a book that I can highly recommend!

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

After having discovered Ray Bradbury for myself comparatively recently, I read “Fahrenheit 451” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, both of which I consider masterpieces. I was therefore looking forward very much to “Dandelion Wine” (what a beautiful title!), which generally gets very good reviews from my GR friends. As you will have gathered from my 2-star rating, I was disappointed.

Essentially, this book is an aestival nostalgia for a long-gone world of growing up in small-town USA. There is no conventional plot but the novel consists exclusively of fragments containing ephemeral, melancholy, and lyrical imagery. Although some of the fragments are beautifully rendered, there are also long stretches of what seemed to me tedious, and frequently lengthy, fillers. Presumably those are the passages that were meant to meld together the short stories of which this “novel”, too obviously, consists. As a result, the overall narrative lacks thematic and logical cohesion.

I was tempted to throw the towel at several points while reading the fillers but was always sucked back in when a new fragment started, due to Bradbury’s dazzling and sensual language, which is on show here as in all the works of his I have so far read. However, the lack of cohesion and traditional plot in this book also emphasises the annoying fact that Bradbury’s exceptional imagination and narrative power tend to run away with him, resulting in entire passages that are cryptic, or to use a less kind word, impenetrable. These kinds of cryptic passages also occurred in “Fahrenheit 451” and “Something Wicked…”, but there they were forgivable and in keeping with the tight narratives of those works.

“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.”

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...