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Originally Posted by Catlady
Well, Dandelion Wine was easier to get through than The Three Musketeers; I'll say that for it. But, like gmw, I prefer more structure and a plotted story, not a series of loosely connected episodes, especially when a lot of those episodes seemed repetitious and/or out-of-place.
I didn't like the Happiness Machine story--that felt like a heavy-handed episode of The Twilight Zone. I didn't like the Tarot Witch--again, cue the woo-woo music, except the story didn't actually go anywhere with all that buildup. The Elmira-Clara witchcraft story was okay, but it was one of the many stories that seemed shoehorned into the account of the boys' summer--I would have preferred the focus to stay on the boys, to see everything from their POV.
I didn't believe that those boys were twelve and ten; they seemed younger. The ten-year-old seemed to have more sense than his brother.
What kind of weird summer was it in that town, with old people dropping like flies and a serial killer wandering around without anybody taking significant precautions? The serial killer was, however, my favorite part of the book; the mounting suspense as foolishly headstrong Lavinia walks home was well done. This section reminded me of an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode (do I watch too much TV?), but the outcome was just WRONG. Lavinia's the one who should've been killed, not the Lonely One--and, for goodness' sakes, shouldn't the Lonely One at least have been someone we'd already met rather than a cipher? (Leo the Happiness Machine guy? Bill the newspaperman?)
Frankly, that summer of 1928 did not seem like the kind of summer a kid would remember fondly--too much sadness and loss. Yet Bradbury went on and on and ON about the wonderfulness of it all, seeing it through some nostalgic haze that he undercut with so many questionable episodes.
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Thanks for this assessment. Saved me some time.