FROM THE DUST RETURNED, is told largely through the eyes of Timothy, a ten year old boy who is raised in a haunted house on the hill above Green Town, Illinois (the setting of both DANDELION WINE and SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES). He is the foundling son of the Elliot Family, who might be vampires, sorcerers, ghosts, or any combination of the three (and more). An outsider by birth (he is found on the doorstep by the Elliots, who initially assume he may be an offering from the town to keep them away), Timothy struggles with a desire to be a part of The Family, while also realizing his mortality is essential to helping them preserve their own strange magic. Though he often spends evenings in the attic conversing with his mummified Many Times Grandmere, and horseplays with his bat-winged Uncle Einar, his closest relationship is with Cecy, the novel’s other main character, an immortal teenage girl who spends most of her life asleep, astral projecting into the minds of others. This book is, for me, the perfect Halloween book and I’ve now read it probably six times. Its lyrical writing and enchanting tone manages to capture the whimsicality and caramel apple sweetness of Halloween without losing the darkness and somber undertones of autumn and a holiday so centered around death. Bradbury’s best work is characterized by his unrepentant love for weirdness and his sincere belief in a world where one can be a monster, but still be human, and a human who loves monsters, while still being scared of them. And though Evil is real in FROM THE DUST RETURNED (as it most certainly is in EXORCISM and STICKS) and must ultimately be defeated by Cecy in what basically amounts to a telepathic sniper shot, it is mortal and myopic, threatening in its ignorance of the complexity that renders vampires as emotionally vulnerable as little boys, and makes us all seek something eternal in a very temporal world.

How to make Tracey happy? Similes, metaphors, A house that's the epitome of gothic,ghosts,ghouls and strange beings, Egyptian mummies, creaking hinges, howling winds, and a certain Mr Bradbury telling the tale...:)
This book is more a collection of short stories all with a common denominator, They are family...
When nobody believes in the good or in the bad then how can they exist?...

Gorgeous. So very, very gorgeous.

I am going to need this in hardback.

Bradbury Challenge Agosto.

Amo a Bradbury, pero este libro fue demasiado para mi. Tiene todas las excentricidades del escritor en una misma historia. Simplemente no puedo.

3.5

It’s Ray Bradbury. He’s awesome. He writes as if his books are supposed to be poetry, and it creates novels with intense themes, tons of descriptive figurative language, and a certain rhythm to each sentence. This book is just another one of Ray Bradbury’s great novels. That’s all there is to it.

The perfect Halloween book with just the right kind of romantic, delightful spookiness for me. Although Bradbury is always a stretch for my very prose-bent brain, he is just such a beautiful writer. My full thoughts are basically a duplicate of my friend Kelli’s review

okay...forstår Bradbury-hypen nu. Den her er som the Addams family, men hvis Strunge havde skrevet den ca. samme tid som Livets Hastighed.

Adoro

Related short stories about the 'Eternal Family'. They have lived for centuries in a big old house in Illinois, coming and going at different times, where preparations are being made for a homecoming.
Wonderfully written as only Ray Bradbury can, these stories introduce us to the members of the family, shapeshifters, telepaths, somnambulists, vampires and A Thousand Times Great Grandmére, who has been around since ancient Egypt. Originally conceived as a joint venture between Bradbury and illustrator Charles Addams, the book was put on hold for many years after Addams'death, but finally finished by Bradbury and published with many of Addams original drawings.
Highly recommended.

A perfect book to read for Halloween. I think the cover really attracted me as it is very obviously a Charles Addams (of the Addams Family fame) painting. Apparently Ray Bradbury and Charles Addams were friends and wanted to collaborate on a book together but it never quite took off. However, this book is said to be the inspiration for the "Addams Family" that Charles Addams created first as a set of cartoons and then ultimately with a TV show.
From the Dust Returned focuses on a homecoming of sorts for a family that is unique in that they are not human and not of this world. They are an "Eternal Family" with members who don't all have bodies, those such as a vampire, ghostly spirit, and all who transverse time and space. The writing is lyrical and beautifully haunting. From the beginning of the Homecoming to the upheaval and abandonment of this supernatural house and inhabitants, the stories of the various family members as they arrive and leave are interwoven and merged for an exquisite otherworldly journey.

Honestly this was my second Bradbury book that I've read and I immediately had high hopes for it, given that the first book I read was Fahrenheit 451. But soon after reading like half of this book I found
myself contemplating why people like it so much. He completely overused the descriptive form of writing that I grew to love so so much. I think what made it even more unbearable for me was the fact that the short stories themselves barely coincided with each other and the plot was so loose that I had a hard time focusing on everything going on in the book. The only character I partially liked was Cecy in the short story The Wandering Witch, and if you've read the book before you will know that this story was the 5th chapter in the book which made the rest of the book feel like the energy you lose, later in the day, after drinking a wonderful cup of coffee. Overall I rate the book 2 stars. I would definitely not read it again nor would I even consider recommending it to any human being that can somewhat tolerate books. Disappointing.