Book Review: From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury

From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury

The Elliott family lives in a northern Illinois town in a creaky old house. A foundling is left on their doorstep, Timothy. He is unique to them because he sleeps at night, can't fly or turn invisible, and hasn't lived for hundreds of years. Timothy is a normal human child adopted by supernatural parents with an eclectic extended family who come for a visit when Timothy is ten years old. Uncle Einar has wings, Cecy sleeps all the time but travels into others' consciousnesses, and A Thousand Times Great Grandmere is literally older than Methuselah. All sorts of odd adventures follow.

Like many other Bradbury novels, this is a compilation or fusion of many short stories that came before this book was publish in 2001. In the afterword, Bradbury tells that the first story was written in 1945 and published in Mademoiselle magazine, which got Charles Addams (the cartoonist creator of the Addams Family) to make illustrations. Bradbury and Addams had planned to do a series of illustrated stories that would turn into a book but their careers went off in different directions. This novel embodies the charm of Bradbury's fanciful prose and elaborate imagination. After the first half, a more novel-like single narrative starts as the family deals with the rest of the world no longer believing in haunts and spooks and the like. It wraps up with the typical Bradbury winsomeness.

The novel is a delight to read and goes by too quickly.

Recommended, highly for Bradbury fans.