I don't know what genius realized that Dave McKean and Ray Bradbury were the clearly the dream team of fantasy writing and illustration but I'd like to kiss their feet.

This gorgeous story is about the youngest son in a very mysterious family. Every one of them is gifted with some dark, beautiful power or astounding ability and all of them will live forever. All but the boy. He alone has a steady human heartbeat and no special abilities that aren't shared by a thousand other people just like him.

He longs for the power of flight like his uncle or to walk in other people's minds like his older sister but no matter how hard he wishes or tries he remains, frustratingly human.

Dave McKean is an artist who traffics in the dark and dreaming worlds and his otherworldly style is literally made to bring Bradbury's stories to life. If he wanted to illustrate every story in The Martian Chronicles or The October Country I would snap them up in a heartbeat.

If you haven't already and you are any kind of fantasy fan I can't recommend McKean's work enough. A frequent collaborator with Mr. Neil Gaiman he got himself into the director's chair a few years ago with the visually stunning and just generally great "Mirror Mask" of which I am a proud owner. There are just no limits with his work. The things he creates defy reason and sometimes explanation but they're never short of gorgeous.

This was a delight.

The story is a lot of things, but scary is not one of them. Folklore and family and not belonging all in a short story. I absolutely loved the illustrations by Dave McKean!

Ray Bradbury was truly an author in a class of his own, an author of uniquely lush prose, endless imagination and a way of turning the sorrows and trials of daily life into stunningly original myth. The Homecoming is one of the most resonant and memorable things he ever wrote, and I am pleased to see this short story honoured as it should be by being published as a standalone work. The story of Timothy, a lonely human boy in a family of monsters and vampires, The Homecoming is a fantasy with a powerful realist subtext, a story about being alone in a crowded room, about a child feeling horribly isolated while surrounded by his bustling extended family at the most important holiday of the year.

And yet... despite Bradbury's prose and the apt sepia illustrations by Dave McKean, I feel compelled to give this work four stars rather than five. This is because the first version of The Homecoming I encountered was in The Giant Book of Fantasy All Time Greats, edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin Greenberg, and published by The Book Company in 1997.

That (earlier) version of the story was radically different, and I personally found it much better than the revised story published here. The earlier version had a lot more detail about Timothy's brothers and sisters- I particularly liked the fact that Timothy's sister Ellen worked as a manicurist and was implied to use her clients' fingernail clippings for dark magic, or the fact his older brothers worked at a funeral parlour. Also, the earlier version was pleasingly ambiguous about exactly why Timothy was the only human in a family of ghouls. His mother stubbornly insists Timothy is only a late bloomer, and that he'll start drinking blood soon. I find the original version's uncertainty about Timothy's fate much more satisfying.

Compare these two passages, the first from the original, the second from the standard version:

Original Version:
Timothy prayed to the Dark One with a tightened stomach.
"Please, please, help me grow up, help me be like my sisters and brothers. Don't let me be different. If only I could put the hair in the plastic images as Ellen does, or make people fall in love with me as Laura does with people, or read strange books as Sam does, or work in a respected job like Leonard and Bion do. Or even raise a family one day, as Mother and Father have done..."

2006 Version
Timothy prayed to the darkness.
Please, please, help me grow to be like them, the ones'll soon be here, who never grow old, can't die, that's what they say, can't die, no matter what, or maybe they died a long time ago but Cecy calls, and Mother and Father call, and Grandmere who only whispers, and now they're coming and I'm nothing, not like them who pass through walls and live in trees or live underneath until seventeen-year rains flood them up and out, and the ones who run in packs, let me be one! If they live forever, why not me?"

The original strikes me as far more potent, more heart-rending, a child's fears that he'll never survive the transition to adulthood, never become a 'real person'. The new version seems more based around the fear of death, which is in my opinion not nearly so interesting. It appears that the second version is now the accepted standard, so I am glad to at least possess a copy of the first.

Bu küçük öykünün aslında çocuklar için yazılmış olmadığını anlayabilecek, okurken çocukluğunuza inebilecek yetkinliğe erdiğinizde kulağınızda Dimmur Borgir'den Progenies Of The Great Apocalypse şarkısının enstrümantal versiyonuyla okuyun, korkuyu, yalnızlığı -farklı olmanın yarattığı yalnızlığı- en derinlerinizde hissedin.

Strange and creepy .......

Such a strange yet deliciously twisted story! I loved all the unique descriptions and characters.

Bradbury'yi seviyoruz çünkü o düzyazının şairi, seviyoruz çünkü o da Poe'yu seviyor.

A very strange family reunion is a brewing (the horror feel and pacing is similar to "Something Wicked This Way Comes") coupled with some very appropriate, spooky style illustrations from Dave McKean.

Both slightly haunting and wonderful, this is a short story that imagines the life of a young mortal boy in a family of immortals and not quite human folks.

What a perfect choice for an illustrator. Dave McKean's drawings are his own but also pay homage to Joseph Mugnaini's frequent collaborations with Bradbury. Bradbury's writing is beautiful like poetry and his words intimate as if they were your own thoughts.

The Homecoming is a short story about Timothy, who is helping his family prepare for a family reunion on All Hallows Eve. This is no ordinary family reunion though. The family are all supernatural beings who are immortal and have fantastic abilities, all except for young Timothy, who is a living, breathing human. He desires nothing more than to be like the rest of his family, specifically, flying like his uncle.

The story is wonderful. Bradbury's writing sucks you in right away. At first, I wasn't a big fan of the artwork, but it grew on me and is befitting of this story. The characters are all well developed for such a short story. Overall, it was a great story!

This is a beautiful book! Not my favorite story from "The October Country", but with this artwork, it really hums! And who couldn't sympathize with Timothy? Not fitting in with one's family, being the black sheep as it were, is a pretty common feeling for many. The twist in this book on that theme is were well done! Keep looking for those wings young man!