Book Review - Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury)

Something Wicked This Way Comes is a book that should definitely not be judged by its cover. The blurb reads like this is going to be a typical horror story with one of the oldest archetypes there is – a cosy town invaded by a creepy carnival. However, the story is a more of a slow-burner and deals more with the theme of ageing and to an extent, the nature of evil. It focuses on two teenage best friends, Will and Jim, and Jim's middle-aged father, as they try to defeat the sinister inhabitants of the carnival.

However, despite the story's grand intentions, I lost interest in this story very quickly. One of its two fatal flaws is the scant characterisation. We spend a lot of time with Will and Jim, but we don't find out very much about them. The story sets up a dichotomy between them where Will is portrayed as the “good” boy while Jim is the “bad” (or at least, corruptible) boy. Will has white hair, Jim has dark. Will has a bright, outgoing personality while Jim is sullen and reserved. Will is born a minute before October 31^st, while Jim was born a minute into it. We find out early on that Jim is more sexually curious than Will, when Jim is fascinated by a naked orgy he sees through a living room window, while Will is repulsed by it. This foreshadows Jim's seduction by the carnival.

All these attempts at a good/evil contrast fall flat however, because the story doesn't show us much of who these boys are. They come across more as a manifestation of two ideals, instead of people in their own right. I didn't get much of a sense of friendship between the two of them. Aside from the orgy reference, we're not told much about their past experiences. The only other characters they're shown to have a relationship with are Will's father (who I'll get to) and their teacher, Miss Foley, who only seems to exist to be a victim. Because of this, the world of the story doesn't feel that developed, nor do Will and Jim come across as fully-developed characters because the lack of context doesn't give the story much to explore about them. When Jim falls under the carnival's spell, I couldn't bring myself to care because the story hadn't developed him enough beforehand. When Will and his father are bonding, I didn't care either because neither of them felt developed either. The book is just under 300 pages long, but the apathy from these one-dimensional characters made it a real struggle to get through.

The other huge flaw in the story (and this one put me off very quickly) was the extravagance of the prose. There are a number of points where the story grinds to a halt so Bradbury can show off his elegant turn of phrase, which got irritating very quickly as I felt I was being preached to. The story was being told to me (in a pretentious, overbearing style) instead of letting me explore it for myself. This goes back to the portrayal of the characters. Jim is meant to be a troublesome boy. Will's father, Charles, is meant to be an old man regretting that he hasn't done more with his life. I know this because the story keeps telling me rather than just let the characters' actions speak for themselves.

The sheer volume of purple prose also jarred me out of the story at several points. For instance, here are Will's thoughts as he struggles to keep up with Jim as they sprint towards the carnival:

Boy it's the same old thing. I talk. Jim runs. I tilt stones, Jim grabs the cold junk under the stones and – lickety split! ... I sit on a rock in the sun and old Jim, he prickles his arm-hairs by moonlight and dances with hoptoads. I tend cows. Jim tames Gila monsters. Fool! I yell at Jim. Coward! he yells back. (Pg. 48)

That doesn't sound like a thirteen-year-old boy to me. That sounds like a grown man thinking back to being thirteen. Bradbury spends far too much time constructing his prose that he fails to make the story immersive or engaging. The text feels more like an elaborate artifice instead of a story.

It becomes absolutely ridiculous by the time the boys go Charles for help. Charles works in the local library and has done a bit of research on the carnival (as much as there is). Instead of something useful, Charles merely tells the boys what we've already figured out for ourselves: the carnival captures people by preying on their inner desires. We know this because we've already seen a travelling salesman seduced by a beautiful woman, and Miss Foley captured by the prospect of becoming young again. And we also have Jim's desire to become a man which compels him to ride the cursed merry-go-round.

When he's not stating the obvious, Charles starts to ramble about cavemen and the agelessness of evil and a lot of other things I've forgotten about because this part of the book is just padding. It's not that I don't want a story about these things, but the story has to be about them. Here it just feels tacked on with no real connection with anything that happens in the story.

Charles goes through a brief character arc himself. He also wants to become young so he can spend more time with his son; it's implied that he and Will have a distant relationship, but again, only implied. By the end however, he sees that carnival is just the manifestation of evil and must be destroyed. He also realises that the carnival's weakness is laughter, and it's by laughing that he and Will finally destroy it.

There are a number of things wrong with this, the most obvious being that a carnival that's destroyed by laughter makes no sense whatsoever. For goodness sake, the story shows us people laughing at the carnival so how come laughing destroys it at the end? Secondly, Charles tells Will to laugh after Jim has apparently been killed by the merry-go-round. Charles reasons that the carnival draws its strength from grief, and by weeping, Will is only making its evil stronger. He urges Will to laugh even though he doesn't want to, which Will finally does, and their joy is enough to bring Jim back to life.

Never mind that saving the day with “happy feelings” is one of the most trite endings there is, the story seems to be saying that fake laughter is just as important as real laughter. Because Will acts like he's happy, it somehow makes him happy and he forgets that his friend has apparently just died. This completely ignores the way emotions really work, in that very often what we see is not how a person feels. A person could be putting on a show of happiness because they're afraid to talk about their depression. A person could appear melancholy because they're naturally introverted and don't show off their feelings. It doesn't matter in the least whether Will is laughing or crying – that doesn't change how he would feel about the situation, so all the laughing and singing and dancing and tooth-rotting syrup of the story's climax shouldn't make the least bit of difference.

I know this makes me feel like some bitter old fart, but really, it's hard to feel positive about a story this bad. I had high hopes for this story. The setup seemed interesting and Bradbury is one of the most respected authors of the 21^st century. The only other work of his that I've read is his short story “The Crowd”, which I remember enjoying very much, so I wasn't biased against the story before going in to it. I just wasn't expecting something this poorly executed.

I'd like to read a good horror story about an evil carnival. I'd like to read a story about the awkward transition from childhood to adolescence. I'd like to read a story about someone who regrets their life choices and wishes for another chance. Something Evil This Way Comes is none of those. I'd ask for a refund.