Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury (novel #231)

You did not hear them coming. You hardly heard them go. The grass bent down, sprang up again. They passed like cloud shadows downhill…the boys of summer running.

 

Dandelion Wine is the story of summer 1928, Green Town, Illinois as seen through the eyes of 12 year old Douglas Spaulding and his younger brother Tom. Douglas and Tom could be any boys from middle America, though Douglas is a bit more philosophical and imaginative than most. Summer is the grand adventure. Not a moment is to be wasted.

 

The beginning of summer is marked when their grandfather begins distilling dandelion wine, aided by the boys harvest of the ubiquitous weed.

 

The golden tide, the essence of this fine fair month ran, then gushed from the spout below, to be crocked, skimmed of ferment, and bottled in clean ketchup shakers, then ranked in sparkling rows in cellar gloom.

 

Dandelion wine.

 

Some have suggested the wine-making process is a metaphor for capturing all the joy and warmth of summer. Perhaps. To me it was just a quaint remembrance.

 

Deep in winter they had looked for bits and pieces of summer and found it in the furnace cellars or in bonfires on the edge of frozen skating ponds at night. Now, in summer, they went searching for some little bit, some piece of the forgotten winter.

 

There isn’t a true plot; it is character driven. As such it wasn’t my favorite by Bradbury, not as terrifying as Something Wicked This Way Comes, nor as poignant as Fahrenheit 451. But as always, Bradbury writes so beautifully his prose is nearly poetry.

 

Halfway there, Charlie Woodman 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.

 

Dandelion Wine is inspired by Bradbury’s childhood: Douglas is Bradbury, fictional Green Town, is the author’s hometown Waukegan, Illinois, and other characters are presumably mapped to his family and friends. It is the first in the somewhat vaguely connected Green Town Trilogy: Dandelion Wine, Farewell Summer, and Something Wicked this Way Comes.

 

Still a very enjoyable read. I’m glad I read it in Summer.

 

My rating: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

 

It was surprising to me that this was set in 1928. It could just as easily have been 1973, my own 12 year old summer in middle America. I think those days are gone now. Pity!

The first thing you learn in life is you're a fool. The last thing you learn in life is you're the same fool.

 

It is the privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But it’s an act and a mask, like every other act and mask. Between ourselves we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? Isn’t life a play? Don’t I play it well?

 

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