Although Ray Bradbury is well-known as an author of science fiction, Dandelion Wine is set in the familiar environs of a small American town in the summer of 1928. According to the novel's prologue - written by Bradbury for a later edition - he would set about to writing whatever came to his mind every morning, the results of which would eventually become Dandelion Wine. As such, the novel consists of a series of loosely connected vignettes, the through-line of which is Douglas Spaulding (a fictional stand-in for Bradbury himself) and his brother Tom.
The novel is, unsurprisingly, very autobiographical: Green Town resembles Bradbury's hometown of Wakuegan, Illinois, in all but name,...