Do you know how hard it is to find a book set in autumn? Okay, maybe not that difficult if you’re reading something about Halloween, but I feel like I’ve read all the expected choices, so trying to find a book for the summer reading club bingo set in my favourite season turned out to be one of the most challenging tasks! Thankfully, we have Ray Bradbury to the rescue, with a sequel to his ode to summer (Dandelion Wine) that takes its protagonists into the heady first days of school that slowly creep towards the Halloween season. The end of the summer always comes as a relief for me, as with its going it brings an end to sweaty nights and overheated afternoons and trades them in for extended golden hour evenings and crisp morning breezes, so I was excited to go along on Bradbury’s last romp through a late summer eve in Green Town. In the story we get a faux war between the young boys of the town and their senior grandparents, which Bradbury uses as an extended metaphor to comment on the aging process, the loss of one’s innocence, and the inevitability of time marching slowly forward. I found the themes a bit heavy handed for him, and a touch less whimsical than usual, as if we could tell that this sequel to the lovely constructed Dandelion mouldered on his slush pile for a season too long and had to be tempted back to life. Yet, there were small moments of his beautifully sparse signature language that made the reading worthwhile, as we ran helter skelter towards the midnight of Halloween through Green Town’s graveyard. Though, if I’m honest, this is by far his least inspiring of his Autumn novels, and I doubt I’ll bother to read it again - it may be farewell summer, but in this case it is also farewell autumn and back to the carnival, dust bowls, and attics that made his October Country so enchanting. ( )

This book would be a perfect little gem without the explanatory dialogue between the two old men in the middle of the action, right after the boy Douglas's Joycean epiphany. There is this moment of pure interior beauty, something that reminded me of To Kill a Mockinbird in its more enlighting and poetic shades, a plot twist so deep in its meaning that it feels like a blow in the stomach, a sweet and relieving one; and immediately after this, there is the explanation in form of dialogue. Not needed, not welcome, cumbersome, awkward. It's a pity, but you can skip it and go on reading and, believe me, the novel is worth it.
The novel itself is the last part of [b:Dandelion Wine|50033|Dandelion Wine (Green Town, #1)|Ray Bradbury|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1374049845s/50033.jpg|1627774], published 55 years before, but it stands alone without problems (I haven't read the first novel yet, and I had no clue there was a "prequel" while reading, nor I had any problem understanding the plot).
What follows is not actually a dramatic spoiler, but I'll hide it anyway.
In the first chapters, children's war against the elderly mummies who want to make them too bored and old is ok, but the elderly schoolboard chairman who ACTUALLY wants to make children into bored and sad adults, and who accepts the children gang's challenge, is darkly, worringly hilarious.

"Wake up, Cal. We are a minority, like the dark African and the lost Hittite. We live in a country of the young. All we can do is wait until some of these sadists hit nineteen, then truck them off to war."

Everything, in this mock war, is serious and is not at the same time, and the characters find themselves making each other lives better without even being conscious of it, until empathy makes the magic against their will.
Then the epiphany, and the coming of age of the child with its sweet-sour flavour, mirrored by the acceptance of the fading away of life on the part of the older man.
The giant figures of grandparents, wise, loving, patient, guiding, are the glue that keeps the narrative together since the start. They prevent any hint of cynicism from sneaking in the description of the cranky old men who love hating youth when they are not too busy dying; their presence and significance also prevent it all to look too much like A Christmas Carol with sexual awakening.
Oh, and the sweetest gift in the end of any story: an afterword by the author, with love. ( )

This book would be a perfect little gem without the explanatory dialogue between the two old men in the middle of the action, right after the boy Douglas's Joycean epiphany. There is this moment of pure interior beauty, something that reminded me of To Kill a Mockinbird in its more enlighting and poetic shades, a plot twist so deep in its meaning that it feels like a blow in the stomach, a sweet and relieving one; and immediately after this, there is the explanation in form of dialogue. Not needed, not welcome, cumbersome, awkward. It's a pity, but you can skip it and go on reading and, believe me, the novel is worth it.
The novel itself is the last part of [b:Dandelion Wine|50033|Dandelion Wine (Green Town, #1)|Ray Bradbury|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1374049845s/50033.jpg|1627774], published 55 years before, but it stands alone without problems (I haven't read the first novel yet, and I had no clue there was a "prequel" while reading, nor I had any problem understanding the plot).
What follows is not actually a dramatic spoiler, but I'll hide it anyway.
In the first chapters, children's war against the elderly mummies who want to make them too bored and old is ok, but the elderly schoolboard chairman who ACTUALLY wants to make children into bored and sad adults, and who accepts the children gang's challenge, is darkly, worringly hilarious.

"Wake up, Cal. We are a minority, like the dark African and the lost Hittite. We live in a country of the young. All we can do is wait until some of these sadists hit nineteen, then truck them off to war."

Everything, in this mock war, is serious and is not at the same time, and the characters find themselves making each other lives better without even being conscious of it, until empathy makes the magic against their will.
Then the epiphany, and the coming of age of the child with its sweet-sour flavour, mirrored by the acceptance of the fading away of life on the part of the older man.
The giant figures of grandparents, wise, loving, patient, guiding, are the glue that keeps the narrative together since the start. They prevent any hint of cynicism from sneaking in the description of the cranky old men who love hating youth when they are not too busy dying; their presence and significance also prevent it all to look too much like A Christmas Carol with sexual awakening.
Oh, and the sweetest gift in the end of any story: an afterword by the author, with love. ( )

Bradbury is simply a master wordsmith. Every time is a pleasure. At times I do get lost, but then a sentence or phrase will capture me with its eloquence. Thank you Mr Bradbury for your writing all these years. ( )

The 3rd in the Green Town series, but really just a sequel to Dandelion wine...an exciting re-encounter with the well loved characters from the first book.

While this was a good book...it wasn't as Bradbury as I was expecting. With a totally different feel and vibe than Dandelion wine, it was easy to forget at times this was a sequel.....it felt a bit too modern. I still enjoyed it...but, I do feel it paled a bit in comparison to the first 2 books in this series.....to Bradbury's work in general. The 50+yr gap in the writing of this sequel is apparent. ( )