Farewell Summer by Ray Bradbury ~ 2006. This edition: Harper Collins, 2007. Paperback. ISBN: 978-0-06-113155-4. 198 pages.

My rating: 8/10. The old Bradbury magic was still in fine working order, in this the last of his published full-length novels. It is really more of a novella; a sequel of sorts to 1957’s Dandelion Wine, picking up with young protagonist Douglas Spaulding in that famously faraway October of 1929.

It took a few pages to settle into Bradbury’s randomly rambling narrative, but once I found the groove the journey was smooth and honey-sweet.

*****

Doug Spalding is thirteen, and poised rebelliously on the edge of a looming maturity, digging his heels in desperately against the advance of time. The old people of the town (barring Grandmother and Grandfather, exempt from their joining their peers in the minds of Doug and younger brother Tim by reason of long familiarity and familial love) are seen as the enemies of the young; especially the four ancient members of the school board, who plot to steal Youth’s time and force the golden boys and girls into the ranks of the elders in their turn.

A war erupts between Doug and his cohorts, and the staid elders of the town, headed by Mr. Calvin C. Quartermain, eighty-one and hanging on to life with both hands even more fiercely after the sudden death of one of his fellow school board members, triggered (possibly) by the actions of one of the boys. The battle takes on epic proportions (though mostly in their collective minds, young and old alike) and is fought with and amongst chessmen and clock towers and haunted houses, until Doug is unexpectedly undone by that age-old adversary of careless youth, the siren song of love.

The very essence of a magical boyhood is conjured up in Ray Bradbury’s vivid words. Visiting the town’s candy shop to prepare for a sacrificial ceremony, the boys find

… honey … sheathed in warm African chocolate. Plunged and captured in the amber treasure lay fresh Brazil nuts, almonds, and glazed clusters of snowy coconut. June butter and August wheat were clothed in dark sugars. All were crinkled in folded tin foil, then wrapped in red and blue papers that told the weight, ingredients and manufacturer. In bright bouquets the candies lay, caramels to glue the teeth, licorice to blacken the heart, cherry wax bottles filled with sickening mint and strawberry sap, Tootsie Rolls to hold like cigars, red-tipped chalk-mint cigarettes for chill mornings when your breath smoked on the air …(D)iamonds to crunch, fabulous liquors to swig. Persimmon-colored pop bottles swam, clinking softly, in the Nile waters of the refrigerated box, its waters cold enough to cut your skin…

Meanwhile, among the old men, Bleak says to Quartermain:

“You remind me of the perceptive asylum keeper who claimed that his inmates were mad. You’ve only just discovered that boys are animals? … 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.  Their crime? Being full up with orange juice and spring rain. Patience. Someday soon you’ll see them wander by with winter in their hair…”

The young and old battle with their various metaphorical and actual weapons and eventually make a truce of sorts, as disguises are penetrated and eyes meet and recognize each other under the superficial masks which time has imposed.

An unusual and beautifully written book, likely best appreciated by those whom, at whatever age, have been brought up short by the stranger’s face in the mirror and the sudden realization that the eyes alone are as remembered.

This writer is often thought of as an author for youth, but I think his older readers will appreciate the true poignancy which lies behind the surface stories. This book is for the already-converted, and for those I will say highly recommended.

New to Ray Bradbury? I’d advise you to perhaps start instead with The Martian Chronicles, or some of the short story collections. You’ll need to adjust your brain to his unique voice and way of thinking to make sense of the kind of coloured crystal envisionings which he occasionally indulged in, and which Farewell Summer is a prime example of.