Lyn's Reviews > Dandelion Wine

“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.”

I re-read this after a couple of decades and like most works, I appreciate it better now than then.

“A good night sleep, or a ten minute bawl, or a pint of chocolate ice cream, or all three together, is good medicine.”

It could be that the 40 plus year old is better suited to understand the perspective of the mature writer than the 16-year-old reader, or it could just be that this great work speaks on many different levels.

“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.”

Fundamental Bradbury, this work explores many of the themes that are representative of his canon: coming of age, spirituality, imagination, and the importance of remaining human amidst an ever increasingly dehumanizing world of technology.

“Sandwich outdoors isn’t a sandwich anymore. Tastes different than indoors, notice? Got more spice. Tastes like mint and pinesap. Does wonders for the appetite.”

*** 2023 reread -

We should have an emergency box in our homes, if life is getting rough, we can break the glass and retrieve a Bradbury book to help us get through the day.

Bradbury makes me smile. His writing, here especially but in most of his canon, goes beyond poetry or prose and is instead an incantation. Ray was a mischievous sorcerer and cast for us spells to evoke a quieter time; a mystical, fantastic landscape where generational families exist and flourish and where adventures can still be had.

Modern critics could decry the antiquated sentimentality of his writing but I would submit instead that his work is timeless and is evocative of a universal human nature: we want to belong and we also want to love and laugh and have fun and the summer of 1928 he describes is still alive in the hearts and souls of children who don’t even know Bradbury and on the painted cave walls of our collective psyche.

This time I paid more attention to the subtle notes of horror dripping disquietude into his otherwise charming idyll. I wonder if David Lynch was inspired by this book when he produced and directed Twin Peaks or Blue Velvet. All three works describe a sunny setting with plenty of shadows creeping around the edges.

Bottles of home made dandelion wine line the basement shelves to recall for us each day of summer past so that we can relive the warmth of July on even the coldest day of December.