Something Wicked This Way Comes

Jim Nightshade and William Holloway are two 14-year-old boys who witness a travelling carnival arrive in their town, simply called ‘Green Town’. One is born just before midnight on Hallowe’en, and the other just after midnight, giving the novel that temporal conceit often found in magical realism a la Midnight’s Children, or Nights at the Circus (the latter incidentally also being about a travelling circus act).

The carnival here is led by the admittedly very creepy Mr Dark, and through him I at once recognised the influence this novel has had on other writers, notably Darren Shan and his Cirque Du Freak novels, in which the titular travelling circus is led by the intimidating and supernatural Mr Tall and also attempts to have two teenage boys join the troupe. In Something Wicked This Way Comes, Mr Dark is a heavily tattooed man whose ink is seemingly able to change, as at one point Jim and William’s faces are visibly depicted on his skin. Interestingly, he also goes by the name ‘The Illustrated Man’, which is the name of one of Ray Bradbury’s short story collections.

An important aspect of the carnival is an enchanted carousel that, when operated in reverse, de-ages the person riding it, and when run forwards, ages them. This is revealed to be how the circus is able to keep operating down through the centuries with the same acts and performers, as is discovered by William’s dad reading up on the carnival in the library where he works. Mr Dark entices people to join the carnival and be ‘absorbed’ by it and become a performer by promising youth or adulthood to anyone who rides the carousel, depending on whether they are an adult or a child, respectively.

The biggest ‘hurdle’ with this novel, if indeed one finds it tricky, is the language. While Bradbury wasn’t technically a stream-of-consciousness writer, elements of the writing have characteristics of it. Sentences are long and often resemble Bradbury musing to himself as he goes along as he makes brief tangents from the action to ponder matters such as why hospital patients often die at 3 a.m. Events are very dream-like and drenched in atmosphere and implication of possible exaggeration through the lens of a child’s mind, as we largely view events through Jim and William’s PoV. Some of it worked for me, but a lot of it frustrated me; a little of it struck me as gibberish. I don’t think Bradbury is ever going to be one of my favourite writers, but there was stuff to like in here and I thought the scene in which Mr Dark stalks the library searching for Jim and William was about as good a horror scene as I’ve ever read in literature. Bradbury's versatility is undeniable and was admittedly impressive. The parts involving the circus acts also put me in mind of the best parts of Tim Powers’s The Anubis Gates when I read part of that novel some years ago.

In addition to my criticisms of some of the writing, I think another way in which this novel didn’t quite reach great heights for me is that - like some other novels I’ve read this year which refer heavily to American cultural concerns - it feels very grounded in a distinctly American experience of Hallowe’en and childhood which doesn’t resonate with me personally. That is, however, a subjective observation of course.