This is a sequel to Dandelion Wine. In an afterword, Bradbury says that originally Dandelion Wine was longer but the material that went beyond the end of the book as printed was cut in response to his editor. He carried on working on the novel...for fifty years! Is it worth the wait? Oh yes...yes it most definitely is. Tree-men-dous. (Not bush-woman-doesn't.)

Now, don't be reading on if you've never read Dandelion Wine and plan to.

It's October and Summer has not quite gone away. It's unseasonably More...

The secret of life explained (or perhaps not really explained) by Ray Bradbury. It's an odd book, even for Bradbury, but gorgeously written, of course, so I'll not complain. It's a coming of age story for Doug from Dandelion Wine, and while it is the sequel to that book, I think it would be easy enough to follow without having read it first. It's definitely more connected than Dandelion Wine, and still mostly keeps the same feel, though instead of the endless summer of the first book, this is mo More...

Dandelion Wine. What a book to get drunk on. What a book to fill your brain, unrelentingly, with beauty on every single page.

What we have here isn't so much a sequel as a sip. Not a ton of plot, not too many characters. Maybe it's not Dandelion Wine, but it's also not as long. It's Ray Bradbury, and his writing is, to put it simply, perfect.
Douglas Spaulding, the wide-eyed hero of Dandelion Wine, is back. And he's still wondering. Why can't summer last forever? Why can't he cling to it forever More...

WOW! Real emotion! I cannot remember the last time that an author caused me to close a book and take a moment to sob like what happened with this book today. Perhaps I read too much and have become jaded, but thankfully Mr. Bradbury broke through for me! I have waited for this book for most of my life as it is a sequel to "Dandelion Wine" which is one of my favorites. This book is powerful in its beauty and emotion and the thought it provoked in me. Parents, there are some adult themes here, ple More...

Is it as good as Dandelion Wine? Well...to be honest, no. But still, it's a fine read for any Bradbury fan and someone looking to catch a bit more of Green Town, IL. Where Dandelion Wine captured the joys of innocent childhood and a town full of unique and charming characters (bottled like a nice wine), Farewell Summer is more about a boy's passage (like a change in seasons) from childhood into adolescence. Douglas learns about old people. He learns about how his actions can effect other people. More...

This work is a sequel to Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, but it can stand very much on its own as I enjoyed this novel without reading that earlier work.

At first, I wasn't so interested in the book's subject matter, largely a mock war between the young (Doug, Tom, and his cohorts) and the old of the town (Calvin C. Quartermain). Cute, but not my reading forte. But as I continued, I warmed up to the book. I realized that Bradbury is interested in ideas about aging, mortality, coming of age (Doug) and More...

Ray Bradbury is to American literature as Credence Clearwater Revival is to classic rock, a producer of compact, meaningful, entertaining genre ambiguous work that speaks with a masterful voice. Farewell Summer is the sequel to dandelion Wine, published 50 years after the first work. In an afterward, Bradbury stated that the bulk of what would become Farewell Summer was created at the same time as the classic Dandelion Wine but the publishers thought the original work too long and convinced the More...

As a sequel to "Dandelion Wine" this was a bit of a disappointment. For a sequel, I suppose, you expect 'more of the same', and this was nothing like "Dandelion Wine" by a long shot. So, it took me a while to get over this and take the book for what it is. It wasn't much help that Bradbury's language seems to have become even more cryptic, if possible.

The book has a brittle feel to it - everything is sparse, concise, dry, nothing of the lush, juicy fullness of "Dandelion Wine" - and after a whil More...

"There are those days which seem a taking in of breath which, held, suspends the whole earth in its waiting. Some summers refuse to end."

When I saw that Ray Bradbury had a new novel out, I could barely wait to get it from the library. Here it was at last, the sequel to One of my all time favorite novels, Dandelion Wine. And for me, it came at a time when I was thinking about Bradbury anyway. Ten years ago this June my college roommate and I flew off to the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. She h More...

I was pretty excited to hear that Ray Bradbury had written a sequel to Dandelion Wine, which is one of the few novels I still re-read every summer, just for the mood. I also love Something Wicked This Way Comes, which is, of course, an October read. I read everything I could get of Bradbury's starting in junior high, and these two books have held up best over time... he's written a LOT and he tends to return to the same themes repeatedly, which is sometimes good but often backfires, because ther More...

Over 50 years ago, the prolific author, Ray Bradbury, wrote one of his most beloved novels, Dandelion Wine. Now that Bradbury is in his mid-80's and nearing the end of his writing career, he has written the sequel to Dandelion Wine.

Farewell Summer takes place in a small, sleepy town in the mid-west. Young Douglas and his friends face the end of summer and the end of childhood. The elderly school board members face a new school year and their own rapidly approaching death. Both generations engage More...

Farewell Summer reads more like an addendum than a complete novel. Bradbury's poetic prose remains intact, and the mood of the writing succeeds as a love letter to the nostalgia of childhood. Where it fails is in the story. Obstacles are encountered and overcome effortlessly, characters exist only to serve a mythical purpose, and Bradbury takes every opportunity to hammer at his ponderous themes. Though beautifully written at times, the lack of any conflict makes this story of growth disingenuou More...

Ahhh. Ray Bradbury. Mister Ray Bradbury. Can anyone spin a dream like him? Green and golden, wistful yet bubbling with life... And here he pits age against youth, or the fear of losing and the fear of being left behind. Love love love the themes (as usual), love the lyrical writing. (Loved the Afterward in which Mister Bradbury tells how the original title of Dandelion Wine was Summer Morning, Summer Night - also lovely.)Not being much of a fan of sci-fi, I wonder if Mr. B writes as beautifully More...

След като се влюбих в лятото дойде време и да се сбогувам с него.
А най-добрият начин и за двете се оказа Бредбъри.

Ако "Вино от глухарчета" бе началото на битката между поколенията, то "Сбогом, лято" е вече разразилата се война - с малките подли номерца и нечестните удари под кръста.
Тя е началото на едно съзряване - преходът между невинните обгърнати в мъгла от фантазия детски години и сериозността на отговорното порастване.
Тя е отказът за продължиш лудешкия си бяг през времето и да продължиш сам More...

Thanks Siobhan for sharing this book with me! Great read.

At start I was not sure where the story was heading and was afraid that it was a kind of soap story, but Ray Bradbury would never do that to his readers! So I kept on reading and was not disappointed.

I realized only at the end, reading his afterword, that this was in fact a sequel of another of his book... that I had never read! AH-AH!

So without knowing that it's linked with an English classic, I summarize my opinion: Interesting charact More...

Not as good as the Dandelion Wine, but still, a very beautiful and emotional book, perfect for a summer evening. Shorter and darker than DW, it will bring you back to the era it described even if you never were there.

Войната срещу Времето, войната за Живота: http://knigolandia.info/book-review/s...

След опияняващото “Вино от глухарчета” на Рей Бредбъри не вярвах, че ще се докосна отново до толкова страстни страници, наситени, преситени, преливащи от живот, от енергия, от онова безумие, наречено живот, и по абсолютно магически начин, неподвластен на кое да е друго изкуство, пренесено на хартия. “Сбогом, Лято” е отдалечено на десетилетия от своя предходник – и е също толкова прекрасен, грабващ и влудяващ роман More...

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No matter how much you loved Dandelion Wine, or how much you love Bradbury, don't read this. Really.

If you were to read this book on the face of it, only on the narrative and the language, you would have a beautifully written book where not much happens. There is a rivalry between Doug and Mr. Quartermain that is on the surface very childish.

However, the real work of this book is done with its theme. I've seen some reviews of this book that were disappointed it wasn't more in the style of Dandelion Wine. I think it is a mistake to think of Farewell Summer as a direct sequel to Dandelion Wine. More...

What an amusing "sequel" to Dandelion Wine. Actually, if you read Bradbury's afterword, most of this book is material that Bradbury's publisher made him cut from Dandelion Wine. The reason was that the original draft was too long, but when you consider that an old man has a conversation with his penis, that (as far as I can understand it) the "spirit" of this old man's penis transmigrates into Douglas Spaulding's pants... There's a couple funny observations I could make: I think I talked with so More...

Bradbury’s clever ability to combine imagination and reality is what makes this short story a brilliant read. The antics of Douglas Spaulding, the leader of the revolution, and his young squadron make this a humorous tale where their attempts to undermine the authority of their elders become increasingly daring and mischievous.

Spaulding’s exploits are very amusing but Quartemain is by far my favourite character. His ever inventive ways of combating the young boys’ delinquency are brilliant. As More...

I'm still on the fence about this book. While I liked it overall, I didn't feel that it was truly a worthy follow up to Dandelion Wine. The appeal of Dandelion Wine was the innocence conveyed in the book, the very strange feeling of being a child in an uncertain world and the terror that one can only feel during that time. Farewell Summer was harsher, more jarring, and I could have used a bit more of a transition between the two... I'm glad the editor cut it out of the original manuscript.

In add More...

I'm greatly disappointed that the structure of Dandelion Wine did not cross over into this sequel. As for that matter, this book stands a little weird considering its predecessor. There's war and violence in these young boy's lives, which at times seems a little too grotesque, and I would have preferred a little more fantasy here. It was very "meh," a book I'll probably be passing along.

*****spoilers below*****

Also, let's talk about the ending. I know Bradbury is one strange bird, but the ending More...

Dandelion Wine is one of my favorite books. Ever. So I was pretty reluctant to read this, its sequel. Why? Um, because Dandelion Wine is a great stand-alone novel. And because fifty years is a really long time to wait to publish a follow-up.

But damn it, I loved it. Farewell Summer is different than Dandelion Wine to be sure, but in a good way. I'm almost reluctant to label it a sequel because it seems less like a continuation and more like an afterthought, a companion, featuring the same charact More...

"Farewell Summer" is Bradbury's long-awaited sequel to his classic "Dandelion Wine". Though it had been some fifty-five years since Bradbury penned the first book, he picks up "Summer" a year removed from the previous story, expertly recapturing his character's voices while at the same time making them sound and act, well, a year older.

In this book Douglas Spaulding and his friends decide to wage war on the older citizens of Green Town as a form of rebellion against their own aging. This is dep More...

My Bradbury for breakfast, lunch and dinner years are a ways back, but I've still paid attention to the guy - at least, I thought I had until I saw that somehow I'd missed this book's 2006 publication.

It took me about a commute and a half to listen to "Farewell Summer" last week, and while most of it's better than the last couple Bradbury short story collections, I was disappointed in the ending, which I thought was a little wishy-washy. There's still a lot of good stuff in here, though: Ray's v More...

I consider myself a huge fan of Bradbury, and have recommended his books to anyone who will listen. This is considered a sequel to Dandelion Wine, one of my all-time favorites, so I was excited to read it. Most of the reviews on Amazon were very positive, but I have to say that I was disappointed. Oh, there's lots of his trademark prose style--that rambling, breathless, words upon words tumbling and laughing to the ends of paragraphs, but the story just didn't move and inspire like his classics. More...

Its one of those books you have to read. I understand it is an epilogue to another book, but i read it as a stand alone because the library did not have Dandilion Wine. When i get my hands on that one i plan to read it too.

I was introduced to the writings of Bradbury from a collection put together writing in his style. It was wonderful, and reading this i see where they get their inspiration.

It is very symbolic, 200pages but says so much.

About a boy named Doug, his brother Tom, and old man Calv More...