Ray Bradbury – Something Wicked This Way Comes

What a fun read! A bit scary, of course. But enjoyable. I rarely rarely read ‘horror’ (I can’t even think of a solid example of something ‘horrorish’ that I have read), but this is probably the closest I’ve come to horror in a fictional novel format. I honestly didn’t find it very frightening or terrifying or anything. My favourite aspects of the book were the characterization of the boys and Bradbury’s writing style.

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I started this book. I think I was anticipating more story/plot than character, but I ended up really liking Jim and Will more than I liked the plot. An excerpt of how Bradbury describes the boys:

The trouble with Jim was he looked at the world and could not look away. And when you never look away all your life, by the time you are thirteen you have done twenty years taking in the laundry of the world.

Will Halloway, it was in him young to always look just beyond, over or to one side. So at thirteen he had only saved up six years of staring.

Will and Jim may be well-established archetypes of young boys(Jim, the darker, mysterious, more mature; Will, the more innocent, cautious, tag along) but placed in Bradbury’s hands and executed with his style they come alive in a refreshing way. I also liked how the relationship between Will and his older-than-average Dad played out; I liked how the Dad was eventually a major character.

Bradbury is also evidently a master of the short sentence, long sentence style. I hope this isn’t just something I’m making up; hopefully you understand what I mean. He’s very very good at the short sentences and he’s also very very good at the rambling ones. He knows how to place every word he chooses to use. A rambling sentence:

A carnival should be all growls, roars like timberlands stacked, bundled, rolled and crashed, great explosions of lion dust, men ablaze with working anger, pop bottles jangling, horse buckles shivering, engines and elephants in full stampeded through rains of sweat while zebras neighed and trembled like cage trapped in cage.

And some of the shorter ones:

The sun rose yellow as a lemon.
The sky was round and blue.
The birds looped clear water songs in the air.
Will and Jim leaned from their windows.
Nothing had changed. Except the look in Jim’s eyes.

These examples also shows you what I like about his descriptive prose. I find passages like the one above, combined with shorter, handful of word paragraphs, are a pleasure to read. I get this feeling of very clean, sharp, vibrant prose from Bradbury. Everything he writes is used just right. I think I could learn a lot from this book. Bradbury’s style is very good. I am not very eloquent, forgive me, all I can think of is ‘very good’. But I think he writes with a good style, one that holds up against the test of time. If I could write half as good as Bradbury does, that would be a nice start. I look forward to exploring his other works.

The merry go round was running, yes, but…
It was running backwards!
The small calliope inside the carousel machinery rattled-snapped its nervous-stallion shivering drums, clashed its harvest-moon cymbals, toothed its castanents, and throatily choked and sobbed its reeds, whistles, and baroque flutes.
The music, Will thought, it’s backwards, too!

 Afterthought: Yes, I did immediately notice some parallels between this and Cornelia Funke’s The Thief Lord. I liked Cornelia’s story a lot more, but it does make me wonder if she was inspired by this one. Which wouldn’t at all be a bad thing! I’m just curious about things like that.