Something Wicked This Way Comes

Ray Bradbury ask this question...Can love combined with happiness, laughing, and dancing conquer evil? It will take 290 terrifying pages to get the definitive answer. This is a classic evil versus good novel published by the great fantasy/horror writer in 1962. This novel is part of Bradbury’s Green Town trilogy, which included Dandelion Wine (1957) and Farewell Summer (2006). As a sidebar, I remember my neighbor’s father back in the ‘50s making dandelion wine, not that it has anything to do with this review. Anyway, this book is so dark that the evil ringmaster/owner of the carnival is, believe it or not, Mr. Dark, aka the Illustrated Man. Stephen King’s It (1986) and The Stand (1990) are worthy challengers to Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes in the dark novel category, but there is something special about this ‘carnival comes to a small town’ thriller. And, and... it’s done without a single clown in the story. Freak show...yes, but no clown. Before I get to the guts of the novel, I think that it’s interesting that Bradbury got the book’s title from a line in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “By the pricking of my thumbs/something wicked this way comes.” Also as a boy, Ray Bradbury met a carnival magician named Mr. Electrico (a character in this novel).  

Two thirteen year old boys (born two minutes apart) are lying on the grass by their homes when Tom Fury, a lightning rod salesman approaches the boys. The boys are Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway (I love those names) and Fury tells them a storm is approaching. He says,...”One of those houses will be struck by lightning!” Is he talking about a real storm, or the impending carnival train? We will re-unite with Tom Fury later in the story. Subsequently that night, the boys see posters being put up in town saying, “Coming October Twenty-Fourth...Cooger and Dark’s Carnival! See the Dust Witch...the Skeleton... the Most Beautiful Woman in the World...Mr. Electrico...The Illustrated Man.” Wow, but it’s October and everybody knows that  all carnivals stop after Labor Day, right? Maybe, but this is a special carnival. At three in the morning, the boys are awakened in their homes by calliope music in the distance. The carnival train is coming! Looking out the high windows of their homes, they could see the train approaching. They dress, climb down from the windows (they both built steps to the ground so they could tiptoe out of the houses) and run for the train. They see a tall dark man, heavily tattooed, gesture and the train begins to unloaded in silence. How’s that possible? Very strange.

The next day the boys run into their teacher, Miss Foley, who is confused and lost in the mirror maze. They get her out and she tells them she is with her visiting nephew, Robert. But is it really her nephew? And why is he missing? Later, Jim and Will find a mysterious carousel (merry-go-round). They spot one of the owners, Mr. Cooger, riding the carousel in reverse. He went on the ride looking about forty and when he got off, he looked like a twelve year old! The boys run. Mr. Dark knows that they saw what happened. Trouble is coming. What is this carnival all about? Why are so many people missing? The boys run to Charles Halloway (Will’s father and janitor of the town’s library). Charles researches the carnival at the library and finds that the same Mr. Dark and Mr. Cooger have had the carnival at least since 1846. How is that possible? How old are Dark and Cooger? This all happens early in the novel, the rest of the story deals with Charles, Will and Jim trying to unravel the mystery before it’s too late for the town. This was an intoxicating and hair-raising tale... to say the least (I got my idiom in).

I liked the fact that Bradbury kept the main characters down to four people: Will, Jim, Charles and Mr. Dark (Cormac McCarthy style). The side characters were great; Miss Foley wanting to get younger, Mr. Fury wanting to see the most beautiful woman in the world, Mr. Electrico, the frightening Dust Witch and the Skeleton Man. When the reader can concentrate on limited characters, the reading experience is easier and more enjoyable. This was a great read...grab a copy and enjoy!

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: It seems to me that I’m a fan of dark novels and I’m not sure why. I know that Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorites, but who else do I like besides Stephen King and Ray Bradbury? Well, I did like the J.K. Rowling Harry Potter series (1997-2007), but by book #7, I soured on the series. Smart move on her part to say goodbye. How many books and movies can you read and watch about ‘Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry’ before you vomit?

I do like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings novels (1937-1949), but the numerous movies have put a damper on my gusto for the books. After awhile, I didn’t care if Frodo Baggins and his servant, Sam, could destroy the ring before Sauron got to them. Sometimes I think that a novel should stay a novel.

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) is a dystopian novel about children marooned on a small island. I know it’s a cult favorite (sometimes I wonder what that is), but isn’t it predictable that they would turn into caveman-like people eventually? Doesn’t it stand to reason that anybody who has previously played cricket would turn into a primitive without  The Laws of Cricket rules to go by?

Now, one of my favorites is Stephen King’s Under the Dome (2009). The story was great...I mean an invisible dome drops from the sky on a Maine town (where else?), but didn’t I see the same alien kids playing games on the half hour show called The Twilight Zone back in the 1960s?

Okay, what about Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965)? What is my wiseguy retort on this novel? Well, I never did understand what the ‘spice’ was about. I know it was controlled by the Atreides family on Arrakis, but what do you do with it...shove it up your ass?

Okay, enough funny stuff. I really liked Charles Dickens Oliver Twist (1838). Goodreads.com says this about the novel, “The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken in by a den of thieves, shocked readers when it was first published. Dickens's tale of childhood innocence beset by evil depicts the dark criminal underworld of a London peopled by vivid and memorable characters — the arch-villain Fagin, the artful Dodger, the menacing Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. Combining elements of Gothic Romance, the Newgate Novel and popular melodrama, in Oliver Twist Dickens created an entirely new kind of fiction, scathing in its indictment of a cruel society, and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery.” This is one of my favorite dark novels.