Farewell Summer

Farewell Summer has one of the longest gestation periods of all of Bradbury's novels. Though marketed as the sequel to Dandelion Wine (1957), its origins are actually complex.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Bradbury was contracted by Doubleday to deliver a novel which was originally to be titled Summer Morning, Summer Night. It was a fix-up - a novel constructed from stories and fragements which had originally been published as short stories.

As Bradbury developed a linking story and theme for Summer Morning, Summer Night, his work became harder and harder. Eventually his editor suggested that the material be split in two. Some of the short stories could be published as a collection which would serve as a taster of a novel to come; and his developed linking materials could be the novel.

With this new work plan, Bradbury successfully compiled and developed what we now know as Dandelion Wine. Ultimately woven into much more than just a collection of stories, it became one of his most successful novelised story cycles.

But the "other half" of the work took Bradbury fifty years to shape into a short novel - Farewell Summer.

Farewell Summer takes the keys characters - Doug and Tom Spaulding from Dandelion Wine - and continues their story into the following summer, that of 1929. Whereas Dandelion Wine presents a loose story arc, Farewell Summer has a distinct plot thread exploring ideas of youth and age.

While Farewell Summer works well, and has some excellent scenes, it's not as compelling as Dandelion Wine. This is perhaps because Dandelion Wine feels reflective and poetic, whereas Farewell Summer feels focused on its very slight plot. While I would unhesitatingly recommend Dandelion Wine to anyone who is new to Bradbury, I don't think I would do so with Farewell Summer.

For a veteran Bradbury reader, however, it's a different matter. Readers familiar with Dandelion Wine will quickly devour Farewell Summer. Bradbury fans will be amused to see that there is a character called Braling, who has problems with his ticker (an unlikely intertextual link to "Marionettes Inc."). They may notice that Colonel Quartermain gets knocked over by Doug Spaulding's bike, just as he had been knocked down by Miss Fern and Miss Roberta's Green Machine in Dandelion Wine. (This is one of the few remaining clues that Dandelion Wine and Farewell Summer were once a single, intermingled text.)

The textual history of Farewell Summer is detailed in Eller & Touponce's Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction. Although Eller & Touponce published several years before Farewell Summer made it into print, they had access to Bradbury's unpublished manuscripts. They carefully show how the plot of Farewell Summer was once going to be the plot of the complete work. It was the difficulty of shoehorning so many separate stories into one coherent narrative that led, ultimately, to two separate works.

So, while the events of Farewell Summer take place a year after the events of Dandelion Wine, to simply refer to Farewell Summer as a sequel is to seriously understate the complex origins of the two works.

As for the title Summer Morning, Summer Night, that got re-used for a collection of Green Town short stories which somehow never made it into either Dandelion Wine or Farewell Summer.

Farewell Summer

First published by Wm Morrow in 2006.

Picture shows the first edition (2006).
Cover art by Tom Lau.