This is one of my secret books.
You know, one of those surprises you find and then covet. Just listen to the opening paragraph.
In the attic where the rain touched the roof softly on spring days and where you could feel the mantle of snow outside, a few inches away, on December nights, A Thousand Times Great Grandmere existed. She did not live, nor was she eternally dead, she…existed.
It reads more like verse than prose. The entire book is a dreamlike experience, for although it includes all the relevant creatures of the undead within it, it does not read like any other “horror” book I’ve ever read. The problems faced by the undead “family” are unique but, in their own way, inevitable.
As you read it, you think you recognize some of the family members, Dracula for one, but they are woven into the story and talked about in such a sideways manner that you begin to think that the “family” is the true story and all the legends are distortions on their reality.
The book itself is actually a group of short stories about the family that Bradbury wrote over a 40 year period. Some have been published, some not. This is one of those books that makes you sit up and wonder, “Why haven’t I read more of Bradbury [or insert another author here]“. Because it truly shows his brilliance.
You will enjoy it and you will come back to it.
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