Sometimes when you re-read something after a gap of many years, especially something read when you were a teen, you are disappointed so I was braced for that, but need not have worried. This is an extended prose poem, evoking emotion, atmosphere, the experiences of a young boy growing up, and the setting of a small American town off the beaten track in the state of Illinois, pre WWII - eventually we find out it is 1928. The timespan is just the three months from June to end August, basically the children's summer holiday from school, and the main characters are Douglas Spaulding and his 10-year-old brother Tom. The book is nostalgic - for the author's own childhood I imagine - and some of it does not quite come off - the Happiness Machine section I found a bit silly - but it is a set of vignettes and short stories exploring various aspects of summer and the small town characters.

During these short three months, Douglas' life changes irrecovably as he first really feels alive and then suffers a series of losses - his best friend leaves town due to the father's job change and various older characters pass on, though not without affecting their friends and families and leaving traces of themselves behind. Douglas records his experiences in a notebook and discusses them with his younger brother though he finds it impossible to convey the sense of his own mortality and the depression that descends on him, which at one point nearly becomes his undoing.

There are a few sections from other character's POVs and among these, the section about the women who attend an evening film performance and the one who comes home alone - bearing in mind there is a serial killer who comes into town occasionally and targets women - is one of the most effective. I think though, that the sections concerning the coming to terms by older people with their own looming end are much more poignant on this re-read, given the passage of time. Anyway, in view of the slight niggle mentioned above, 4.5 stars which translates into 5 on Goodreads. ( )

USA, 1928
Drengen Douglas Spaulding er 12 år gammel og vi følger ham i de tre måneder gennem sommeren 1928, hvor han bliver bevidst om sig selv og sin fremtid.

??? ( )

This wasn't my favorite Bradbury, but I still liked it. Mainly, I thought I would give this a read before Something Wicked This Way Comes, in my long wait for my ebook hold on the latter to become available. Dandelion Wine is a fix-up novel with slightly connected stories about some of the inhabitants of an Illinois town. The stories are wrapped together by two brothers' school-less summer vacation. Most of the stories are realistic, but a couple have a science fiction feel, and there was a theme in a lot of the stories related to the young and old interacting. While kind of weak as a novel due to the way it was written, the individual stories it's made of are all pretty memorable. To my surprise, after a bit of googling, Bradbury didn't make up Dandelion wine. ( )

This is one of my all time favorite books and the reason I became a huge fan of Bradbury. Published in the 1950s....this story is told from the prospective of a 12 yr old boy......his experiences in the summer of 1928. The town and characters are fictitious......however, it is based of off Bradbury's childhood.

Although this isn't the typical horror or fantasy usually associated with Bradbury, his style is the same. His ability to write beautifully, poetically and with a deliberately florid prose, while never losing sight of the story or complicating the flow.......the talents that make his writing iconic....are very much on display here.

I recommend this book for EVERYONE who loves to read!! ( )

A classic originally published in 1957. Set in summer of 1928 in the fictitious town of Green Town, Illinois, based upon Ray Bradbury's childhood town of Waukegan, Illinois.

This is the story of a young boy remembering a part of his boyhood during one particular summer. A summer where he first began noticing changes in people, his hometown, his life. He also documented all "the firsts" of that summer. The first dandelion picking for the dandelion wine announced summer's arrival. The sound of the first lawnmower...the summer festival...the friend who moved away...the serial killer who struck again...the deaths of two of the oldest "time travelers" in town. One thing we know for sure is Douglas Spaulding didn't like change...and I can fully relate.

On pages 219-220, it states: "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.

What's interesting is the fact that for this novel, the author, Ray Bradbury, woke each morning and wrote down words that conjured up bits and pieces of his own childhood, then began writing out his memories. For example, he would write down the word apple tree. Then start journaling what he could remember about the apple trees in his grandparents yard. This is how the novel developed, so it's also a peek into his real life in the early years.

The problem I had reading this book was the way it was written. It was so over fluffed with synonyms and symbolism of things that I often got lost in his intended meaning. The naive, carefree lives of the young boys running around a small town doing what boys did back in the 1920's was nearly completely lost on me because of his style of writing. ( )