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.

n  “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.”n

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

“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!

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: n  

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?

n
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)

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

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.

--------------------------
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 n  "Flower Trilogy".n

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.

“Every year, Said grandfather, every year, they run amuck. I let them, pride of the lion in the yard. Stare and they burn a hole in your retina. A common flower, a weed that no one sees. Yes. but for us, a noble thing. The dandelion.”

Do you hear some sounds which are emanating from nowhere around, and still you hear them? Or, do you not hear the sounds which are there, far away, you know this, yet you do not hear them? I advise you, to borrow the ear of a canine, for five seconds, don’t look into the eyes of that earless canine in those five seconds. When it is on you, tune it high (the ear), stretch it taut and you will hear, through this borrowed ear, those sounds, miles and miles across the town. Give it back (the ear).

Ray Bradbury does this so many times. This was his style for me. He will make you hear those sounds which are not there. Or, which are there but you are not aware! He made me feel this.

I read this book by Ray five months ago and this was my first book by the author. I liked the book and the writing very much, It impressed me a lot. Awe-inspiring! Unique in taste and style both! But I did not post my thoughts on it. Do you know the reason? I tell you now. Actually, I could not add up the entire book together at that time. There was a story going on and it was arousing the curiosity, and pressing the nerve of infantile fancy, and was moving at a very fast pace, but yet I could not gather it up. As if I had filled some sort of fresh sand in my fist, and I felt its warmth in my palms and its granularity between my fingers, yet I could not clench my fist and it slipped out slowly.

Now in the past few weeks, I have read dozens of short stories from his book ‘100 most celebrated stories’ and I got the answer to what dilemma had caught me when I finished the dandelion wine. I found that some of the stories were the same as those I had read in this book. So was the Dandelion wine a short story collection? I asked myself, and I could not say, yes! There were so many interlinked narratives in this book that you can get confused if they are all different or just one story.
Maybe my ignorance but the common thread was a 12-year-old boy Douglas. He sometimes thinks and talks a way more maturely than his age and a philosophizing tone is always present in the book. He was a mystery throughout for me. This guy Douglas!

Children squinting their ways through the hide-and-seek or kick-the-can, in summer evenings, eating foil-wrapped chilled Eskimo pies. One man trying to make a Happiness Machine, two old women collapsing against the attic door, scrabbling to lock it right, a young reporter falling in love with a ninety-year-old lady, you find all this here, in the Green town, many strange people entering in the life of Douglas one summer.

“I don’t know anything.
…The beginning of wisdom as they say. When you are seventeen, you know everything.”

Great author! Great writing! Great stories! Great this wine, Dandelion wine! Taste it once!

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.

Βαθμολογία: 9/10

Τι υπέροχο βιβλίο ήταν αυτό! Καλά, όλα ή σχεδόν όλα τα βιβλία του Ρέι Μπράντμπερι είναι υπέροχα, μιας και ο άνθρωπος αυτός ήταν ένας υπέροχος τύπος με καταπληκτική γραφή και απίστευτη φαντασία, όμως τούτο το βιβλίο είναι πραγματικά μαγικό, σε ταξιδεύει σε άλλες εποχές και άλλα μέρη, σου προσφέρει με τη σέσουλα εικόνες, συναισθήματα και μυρωδιές, χωρίς καν να κουνηθεί ο αναγνώστης από το κρεβάτι ή τον καναπέ ή την πολυθρόνα ή όπου αλλού κάθεται κατά τη διάρκεια της ανάγνωσης. Ουσιαστικά δεν πρόκειται ακριβώς για μυθιστόρημα, αλλά για κάτι σαν μια σειρά επεισοδίων που όλα μαζί συνθέτουν ένα σύνολο, μια γενικότερη ιστορία, που διαδραματίζεται στην Πρασινούπολη του Ιλινόις, το καλοκαίρι του 1928. Η γραφή του Μπράντμπερι φυσικά κάνει τη μεγάλη διαφορά, έτσι υπέροχη και ποιητική όπως είναι, σε κάνει να νιώθεις ωραία, ήρεμα, αλλά παράλληλα σε μελαγχολεί και λιγάκι, σε κάνει να νοσταλγείς την παιδική σου ηλικία, τα χρόνια που πέρασαν και που τα άτιμα συνεχίζουν να περνάνε, ακόμα κι αν τα πράγματα δεν ήταν πάντα τόσο ειδυλλιακά ή καταπληκτικά, γιατί πώς να το κάνουμε, έτσι είναι η ζωή: Έχει τα σκαμπανεβάσματά της, πότε είναι ωραία, πότε άσχημα και πότε απλώς βαρετά. Όσο για το αν υπάρχουν στοιχεία του Φανταστικού στο βιβλίο, όπως το πάρει κανείς: Υπάρχουν και δεν υπάρχουν. Εξαρτάται από το πώς βλέπει κανείς τη ζωή.