Something Wicked This Way Comes
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First published in 1962, Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes brings a travelling carnival to the quiet Midwestern town of Green Town, arriving with the promise of wonder and the threat of something far more sinister. For thirteen-year-old friends Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway, the appearance of Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show turns an ordinary autumn into a confrontation with the secret longings and fears of the adults around them. At the carnival's centre stands the mysterious Mr Dark, whose attractions offer impossible transformations at a terrible price, while Will's father, Charles Halloway, must find the courage to face both the carnival's menace and his own anxieties about ageing. As the town falls under the spell of the travelling show, childhood innocence gives way to a more difficult understanding of time, desire and mortality.
Part dark fantasy, part coming-of-age story, Bradbury's novel draws its power from the uneasy border between the marvellous and the macabre, where the greatest dangers often arise from wishes that seem perfectly reasonable. His richly rhythmic prose evokes the golden light and gathering shadows of an American autumn, giving the story the atmosphere of a modern Gothic fable. Beneath its supernatural spectacle lies a tender meditation on fathers and sons, the passage of time and the possibility of resisting fear through love and laughter. Among Bradbury's most distinctive works, Something Wicked This Way Comes brings the Gothic tradition into small-town America, transforming the carnival into an enduring symbol of temptation and the darkness that accompanies the desire to remain young.
From the book
“October is a fallen leaf, but a wider horizon more clearly seen.”
— Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
On Something Wicked This Way Comes
“Could there be a more resonant chiller than Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes?”
— David Barnett, The Guardian