There’s no question in my mind that Bradbury was one of the world’s greatest short story writers. Apart from perhaps his novel Farenheit 451, most of his books are either explicitly collections of short stories, or a string of short stories bound together by some overriding theme or linking narrative. The Martian Chronicles, The

Illustrated Man – collections of wonderful short stories joined together into longer narratives.

Dandelion Wine is just like that: a set of stories set in Greentown, Illinois, in the year 1928 (just one year after the annus mirabilis explored by Bill Bryson in his book One Summer). They are linked by the characters of 12-year-old Douglas Spaulding and his younger brother Tom. It’s a book about growing up, full of both sweet nostalgia and childhood fears, clearly at least semi-autobiographical. There’s both humour and terror, and a way of life now long past when children could explore the world unencumbered by regulations or too much parental concern.

And the writing is gorgeous, beautifully crafted, again a delight to read aloud. Just listen to Colonel Freeleigh, an old man who the boys call ‘The Time Machine’ for his marvellous ability to take them into the past as he reminisces about his life:

‘Eighteen seventy-five … yes, me and Pawnee Bill on a little rise in the middle of the prairie, waiting. “Shh!” says Pawnee Bill. “Listen.” The prairie like a big stage all set for the storm to come. Thunder. Soft. Thunder again. Not so soft. And across that prairie as far as the eye could see this big ominous yellow-dark cloud full of black lightning, somehow sunk to earth, fifty miles wide, fifty miles long, a mile high, and no more than an inch off the ground. “Lord!” I cried, “Lord!” – from up on my hill “Lord!” the earth pounded like a mad heart, boys, a heart gone to panic. My bones shook fit to break. The earth shook: rat-a-tat rat-a-tat, boom! Rumble. That’s a rare word: rumble. Oh, how that mighty storm rumbled along down, up, and over the rises, and all you could see was the cloud and nothing inside. “That’s them!” cried Pawnee Bill. And the cloud was dust! Not vapors or rain, no, but prairie dust flung up from the tinder-dry grass like fine corn meal, like pollen all blazed with sunlight now, for the sun had come out. I shouted again! Why? Because in all that hell-fire filtering dust now a veil moved aside and I saw them, I swear it! The grand army of the ancient prairie: the bison, the buffalo!’

Isn’t that glorious? I could quote pages like that. What a writer! ( )

All of Bradbury's writing transports me to another place. ( )

Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury, made a deep and lasting impression on me. It is already, after one reading, on my ever-mutating list of favourite books. It was powerful. I smiled cheerily at most of it, cried twice, and laughed out loud once. That's a lot of feeling from a woman with a locked-up heart, and a mind closed to love forever.

Dandelion Wine takes place in the summer of 1928, in Greentown, Illinois, and focuses on the lives of two brothers, Doug and Tom. These boys really know how to spend every moment of summer, and in the years before helicopter parenting, they had a summer like I used to have, outdoorsy, unsupervised, and mainly happy. The tales of new sneakers and matinees provide a lovely backdrop to the real power of this story, which points out that you can't get time back. In between cavorting and planning, the town where Doug and Tom live undergoes deaths, old romances, a serial killer (that was a surprise!), secrets, fears, and the bottling of dandelion wine, which is the very essence of childhood summers.

I could smell grass and Coppertone sun lotion and heat while I read. I could hear cicadas droning, noisy children, and crickets, to whose music I fell asleep almost every night of my childhood summers. I don't know when I've read a book so evocative of my youth.

I expected science fiction. It is what Bradbury's known for. It wasn't. It veered briefly into horror when a serial killer comes to town, an event so tautly writtien that at one point I screamed out loud, but it is not science fiction in any discernable way. I find myself comparing it, even while reading it, to my beloved A Death in the Family by James Agee, a masterpiece of American fiction, perhaps the finest of the twentieth century. Dandelion Wine stands next to it, proudly.

The narrator was excellent. He had a fine voice and dramatized with excellence. His name is David Aaron Baker.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. ( )

I have never tasted dandelion wine, but I feel like I can conjure it to my lips. The aroma from the old, cloudy bottle is redolent of nostalgia; a cloying scent of freshly cut grass and your nan's culinary magic undercut by a sweaty, fetid, almost smegmacious, stench that coats the sinuses. The first sip effervescing on the tongue; an explosion of ecstacy, as if standing in Wonka's factory as the bombs fall. Every sweet and sour taste is there, so perfectly overwhelming in their apotheosis. Now the nose is running, mouth watering, tastebuds fizzing. The palette, now roused by this wondrous sensation, yawns and stretches, before rolling over and awaiting the flavours to bathe it. Boiling treacle reaches out with tentacles of nostalgia, strangling the palette, coating it in choking oil, even as the bittersweet bit in its mouth keeps it distracted. Your mouth is held open, a foie gras funnel forced down your gullet as the sickly, gritty substance is pushed inside. You choke and splutter, while faceless family members and your imaginary friends comfort you, whispering the exact exquisite words you always needed to hear to be complete. You feel calm for a moment, enjoying the embrace and savouring the sugary alcoholic bite, and what it's doing to you. The spigot is turns all the way, filling you with gloop, until you explode and lay among the tatters of everything else that wasn't in the recipe. ( )

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. ( )