Book Review: Dandelion Wine

by Tristan

One of the most well known names in science fiction is Ray Bradbury, author of such famed classics as Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles. But Bradbury also has another side to him, revealed in his lesser known, but equally brilliant novel, Dandelion Wine, which is based on his childhood experiences in small-town Illinois in the 1920s.

Dandelion Wine tells the story of Douglas Spaulding, and the course of his adventures in Green Town during the summer of 1928, the summer that begins picking fox grapes and wild strawberries, and the sudden realization in the fun of a brotherly fight that he, Douglas Spaulding, is alive.

This is a story of everything: of little things. Of memories retold by a seasoned veteran storyteller, of the way new tennis shoes make you feel like an antelope when first you put them on; the disorder of grandma’s kitchen (and the wonders that come out of it); of the terror of the shadowy ravine that had to be crossed to get home after the night showing of The Phantom of the Opera; of what it was like to ride the old trolley, with the green plush seats, on its last and final ride before the busses came to modernize things. It’s a story of a thousand memories of things we can’t forget, that we should store away in the back of our minds, like Grandfather stored away the homemade dandelion wine in the cool dark of the cellar, to be opened and drunk in the cold of the winter, when a memory of the dandelion summer is just what the soul needs.

The summer porch is still waiting, with its familiar faces of grandfather and grandmother, uncles and aunts and boarders, and the children on the porch swing, rocking with a gentle creak to the music of the locust-night. The dandelion wine waits to be sipped, in the darkness of cellar memories. Drink deeply. Read Dandelion Wine.