Ray Bradbury. The undead. The memories of the undead. A gray afternoon in late October. Should've been a perfect match for me, eh?

Sadly, not so much. I found this book very overwritten. I understand from reading about it that it is a pull-together and fleshing out of many short stories Bradbury wrote over the years. I guess the idea of gods/myths not having any power if one does not any longer believe in them is probably as old as time itself, but I kept thinking, "Neil Gaiman did this better in American Gods." Yes, yes, I realize Gaiman probably read Bradbury's stories. Doesn't matter.

Still a huge Ray Bradbury fan, though.

Gothic, eerie, eccentric. This is a collection centering on members of the odd, oft-supernatural Eternal Elliott family. Not all of the stories worked for me, and I am once again begging Ray Bradbury’s lingering ghost to cut back approximately 10% on the lyrical language. I know! I’m sorry! I just want to read without constant rereading and slowing down when I’m trying to establish a flow. (And please don’t get me wrong. I love lyrical language, particularly Bradbury’s dreamy approach, but does every sentence need to be a puzzle to solve?) I chipped away at this book for two years, but I might have had an easier time reading it over a smaller window if I could have grasped his slippery style. But I love a good spooky family, and I think the whole thing about “great minds” is proven by Bradbury and Charles Addams. There is a lot of material here that would work well being adapted into its own show, I believe. Fingers crossed!

Una historia sobre una familia peculiar, de fantasmas y seres peculiares que viven con Timothy un niño vivo, en l historia se reune la familia y se va descubriendo la historia de varios de los personajes.

Estuvo bien pero no me atrapó completamente, hubo partes que no entendía quién era que pero estuvo entretenido.

Creatures of the night...

Usually I give a short blurb at the beginning of my reviews, but I found it exceptionally hard with this one because basically the book isn't really about anything discernible. Lots of creatures of the night and weird people with strange powers (maybe werewolves and vampires – I really have no idea) are en route to a family homecoming at the Elliot house in Illinois. While there, we will be told a few stories about some of them which seem to be almost entirely unlinked to each other but for the repeated appearance of a few of the characters.

I'm guessing you've already worked out that this book didn't exactly thrill me. Fantasy is always a big ask for me, but at least most fantasy has some kind of story. The book apparently originated as short stories written over a long period of time which Bradbury then brought together in 2001, writing linking portions to try to give it some kind of coherent structure. This is the same way as Bradbury's much earlier (by half a century) The Martian Chronicles evolved – a book I thought was truly wonderful despite the fragmentary feel of it. Unfortunately, it doesn't work quite as well with this one. Firstly, with one or two exceptions, the separate stories aren't terribly interesting; and, secondly, there doesn't seem to be much of an overarching theme to outweigh the weakness of the linking.

The main residents of the house are a mummy known as One Thousand Times Great-Grandmère, Cecy, a girl who can dream herself into other people, Mother and Father (nope, got nothing to say about them at all) and a mortal boy, Timothy, who was taken in by the family when he was abandoned and now dreams of one day having wings like his Uncle Einar. Later Grandpère appears too – OTTG-G's husband. Most of the stories involve one or other of these characters plus an array of other characters who tend to make only one appearance.

If there is a theme, I think it might be that Bradbury is regretting the passing of belief in tales of the supernatural – sometimes comparing it to the loss of childhood, sometimes suggesting a kind of connection with the growth of atheism. But I think I may be looking too hard. Perhaps we're just supposed to enjoy it for what it is. And maybe people who like fantasy more than I do will indeed enjoy it. Some of the descriptive writing is great, though sometimes it becomes rather overblown. I enjoyed the stories that had more of an actual story – the one where Cecy inhabits a young woman's body in order to experience falling in love, for instance; or the story about the ghost, fading because of people's lack of belief in the supernatural, and the nurse who helps him on his journey to Scotland, where he hopes that superstition still thrives enough to save him. But others are really just a series of descriptions and odd little vignettes that left me searching for the elusive point.

I think it might have worked better had it just been left as a book of short stories – the attempt to link them actually highlighted the unevenness of quality and lack of depth of meaning. Nope, I'm afraid this just wasn't my kind of thing. Ah, well! 2½ stars for me, so rounded up.

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6 out of 5.
I love this book more than maybe any other book ever, for a whole host of reasons. It is not perfect (in my opinion, no fix-up really can be, by their very nature) but it's all the better for those imperfections, for Bradbury's melancholy turned to the perfectest expression -- the weirdness of family, a family of weirdness, and what it means to carry a story around with you. Gods I love this book so much and will be writing more extensively about it shortly.

Легка збірка оповідань об'єднаних у 1 твір, що навіює атмосферою Е.-А. По і, водночас, поетичністю Бредбері

Атмосферненько та й тільки, якраз на Halloween)
Збірка коротеньких оповідань про дивну сімейку усякої нечисті.
Не сподобався переклад цього видання - тут 5 перекладачів на такий маленький об'єм (як завдання на курсак якийсь))), вийшло дуже в різнобій.

What an odd, brilliant little story. Bradbury's ornate writing style always bogs down his books a bit for me, but I still really enjoyed this one.

Приятна колекция от новела и разкази на Бредбъри. Най-много ми хареса ,,Драконът танцува в полунощ ".

Gorgeous literary perfection.

Well, I admit this book wasn’t the fun and light spooky read I was hoping for. And no that is not me having a little tantrum

My last read of 2023! This prose hits differently in December than October, but I do love these very Addams Family esque characters and Bradbury's often dreamy writing. On my next night off I'll write more thoughts on these last reads of the year