After seven very long years, a new and generous (twenty-two stories) Bradbury collection. Two of the best stories feature an old priest who casts out the demon of an agonized ""chocolate junkie,"" and a young spaceman, holding long, treasured conversations with a robot replica of Mr. George Bernard Shaw. In the village of Dandelion Wine, twelve-year-old Doug Spaulding desperately resists the food ...
More which is ""poisoning"" his body into adulthood and the classroom learning which is erasing the clear imprint of his child-self. At least two Bradburys are in evidence here, of varying interest: the last explorer who showed us the poetry of space and the redundancy of technological gingerbread isn't as much of a revelation as it was a few decades ago. The Bradbury who pursues gentle astonishments just around the corner of our daily boredom is as rewarding as ever.