I did it! I completed reading the book that had been on my Goodreads “Want to Read” list longest.
I don’t really remember adding Dandelion Wine on June 14, 2010. I added that along with 32 other books in a liking frenzy. (See my full list from that day at the bottom.) I probably was reading a list of books to make sure you’ve read by the time you were 45. I’ve only read 4 of them, but I’ve read Good Omens twice. Let’s call it a 15% success rate!
I clicked on Dandelion Wine before any of the others on the list, if you go by the Goodreads sorting. It always hung out at the bottom of my list, a humongous dandelion floating above a boy’s head on the cover. In small form, it always seemed fantastical and had a whiff of sci-fi sitting there over the years with its pink cover. Having only read Fahrenheit 451, I had thought of Bradbury as primarily a science fiction/horror writer, so I really had no idea of what i was getting into. I definitely expected something weird to happen.
And surprise, it was nothing like that at all, it was turned into a bunch of lovely little vignettes about summer in 1928. Told by a couple of brothers, Douglas and Tom, it covers all manner of change overtaking this small town. The loss of the cable car, several deaths, and an animatronic fortune teller mannequin ripped from her case are all painted so brilliantly by Bradbury, you feel it.
I was loving the narrative of this sweet summer, until page 37 when the story switches to Tom’s narration of an evening with his mother. He had been going home with Douglas, but:
Charlie Woodhouse and John Huff and some other boys rushed by like a swarm of meteors, their gravity so huge they pulled Douglas away from Grandfather and Tom and swept him off toward the ravine.
Of COURSE the grandfather says “Don’t get lost, son!” and an echo-y denial floats back. THEN Doug is late coming home, so Tom and his strangely nervous mother go out for a walk to look for him:
Leaving the sidewalk, they walked along a trodden, pebbled, weed-fringed path while the crickets rose in a loud full drumming chorus. He followed obediently behind brave, fine, tall Mother—defender of the universe. Together, then, they approached, reached, and paused a the very end of civilization.
The Ravine.
Here and now, down in that pit of jungled blackness were suddenly all the things he would never know or understand; all the things without names lived in the huddled tree shadow, in the odor of decay.
He realized he and his mother were alone.
Her hand trembled.
At that moment, I had a horrible feeling that Bradbury had snuck a horror story in on me. Were the prior 36 pages just a ruse?
But no. Doug and his friends came home, none the wiser that Tom and his mother had shared a moment of fear in the dark. Not a horror tale, but a brutally honest one—what a way to describe being a parent: a few minutes of terror on a warm, summer night.
Bradbury distills moments inspired from his own childhood and gathers them together under this title. His middle name is Douglas, and his father’s name is Thomas—not being too obvious there, old Ray, are ya? Several of the chapters were published originally as stand-alone pieces in magazines, and that is pretty evident. As long as you accept you’re not getting some grand narrative, it’s appealing; it’s not unlike how summers fade into a few memories, the highlights and lows standing out among a hazy memory of sun and mosquitoes. This is a great book to read in the dead of winter. Bradbury’s prose is so evocative, you’d swear you can hear the crickets drumming.
If your edition includes a 1974 introduction from Bradbury, I highly recommend skipping the introduction before reading. Go back afterwards, and read just how Bradbury felt writing these pieces, and his nostalgic intentions.
My edition has a very 90s cover by fantasy artist, Tom Canty. I did not picture Tom and Doug’s mother in that type of attire at all, some kind of frou frou dress.
I saw her more as Sally Field in Places in the Heart.
I do have to share one section that really made me laugh, though, from a perspective I’m not sure Bradbury completely shares with me. After all of the lovely descriptions of capturing the essence of the summer and making the dandelion wine, when the boys…
…picked the golden flowers. The flowers that flooded the world, dripped off lawns onto brick streets, tapped softly at crystal cellar windows and agitated themselves so that on all sides lay the dazzle and glitter of molten sun,
Bradbury describes the miracle of the wine in winter, such a miraculous liquid that…
Even Grandma, when snow was whirling fast, dizzying the world, blinding windows, stealing breath from gasping mouths, even Grandma, one day in February, would vanish to the cellar.
Above in the vast house, there would be coughing so, sneezing, wheezings, and groans, childish fevers, throats raw as butcher’s meat, noses like bottled cherries, the stealthy microbe everywhere.
Bradbury describes the wine as an elixir that even Grandma would love, and I had a brief moment of solidarity with that lone woman caring for members of the House of Snot. If I had a house full of sick family cooped up in the dead of winter, I’d be filling my glass regularly.
So five stars for this one. I’d knock it down to four for not living up to my expectations of some freaky horror story, but that’s my own damn fault so we’re sticking at five.
Books Added to My Goodreads Account on June 14, 2010
Here they are, listed alphabetically by title, all of the books that I added on 6/14/2010. Those in bold were read by me, I swear. Even if my GR doesn’t show it!
Drop me a line in the comments, and let me know which one you think I should take on next.
- The Age of Innocence – Wharton, Edith
- Between the Bridge and the River – Ferguson, Craig
- The Brief History of the Dead – Brockmeier, Kevin
- Crossing to Safety – Stegner, Wallace
- Cry, the Beloved Country – Paton, Alan
- Dandelion Wine (Green Town, #1) – Bradbury, Ray
- The Elegance of the Hedgehog – Barbery, Muriel
- A Girl Named Zippy – Kimmel, Haven
- Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch – Pratchett, Terry and Gaiman, Neil
- Growth of the Soil – Hamsun, Knut
- Harpsong – Askew, Rilla *
- Housekeeping – Robinson, Marilynne
- In the Country of Last Things – Auster, Paul
- Independent People – Laxness, Halldór
- Kushiel’s Dart (Phèdre’s Trilogy, #1) – Carey, Jacqueline *
- Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal – Moore, Christopher *
- Nation – Pratchett, Terry
- Native Speaker – Lee, Chang-rae
- A Natural History of the Senses – Ackerman, Diane *
- Perfect Circle – Stewart, Sean *
- Radio Free Albemuth – Dick, Philip K.
- The Riddle-Master of Hed (Riddle-Master, #1) – McKillip, Patricia A.
- Riotous Assembly – Sharpe, Tom
- A Room with a View – Forster, E.M.
- Shibumi – Trevanian
- A Soldier Of The Great War – Helprin, Mark
- The Sparrow (The Sparrow, #1) – Russell, Mary Doria *
- Summerland – Chabon, Michael
- The Turn of the Screw – James, Henry
- The Wasp Factory – Banks, Iain
- The Westing Game – Raskin, Ellen
- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Murakami, Haruki
- Winter’s Tale – Helprin, Mark
