Something Wicked This Way Comes

Bradbury, Ray. Something Wicked This Way Comes.

After reading Chris' review of Something Wicked This Way Comes, I really couldn't resist picking it up on my next library visit. (I ended up taking several Bradbury's home with me though this was the only one I got read this past week.) There is something so delicious about Bradbury's style. I still don't know if I'm actually in love with the style or the content. I guess a bit of both. But for me it's all about the style. It is how the story is told. The words, the phrases, the images. I think if this story had been written by another writer, it wouldn't have "grabbed" me as much as it did. This is a book that gets you at hello. Read the first few paragraphs and see what I mean:

First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren't rare. But there be bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn't begun yet. July, well, July's really fine: there's no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June's best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September's a billion years away.

But you take October, now. School's been on a month and you're riding easier in the reins, jogging along. You got time to think of the garbage you'll dump on old man Prickett's porch, or the hairy-ape costume you'll wear to the YMCA the last nightof the month. And if it's around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight, it seems Halloween will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners.
But one strange wild dark long year, Halloween came early.

One year Halloween came on October 24, three hours after midnight.

At that time James Nightshade of 97 Oak Street was thirteen years, eleven months, twenty-three days old. Next door, William Halloway was thirteen years, eleven months and twenty-four days old. Both touched toward fourteen; it almost trembled in their hands.

And that was the October week when they grew up overnight, and were never so young any more... (1-2)

I really can't say much more about it. Two friends. One big adventure. A Carnival with the wrong sorts of people. It is one thrilling ride of a book.