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Ray Bradbury

From the Dust Returned Mass Market Paperback – Illustrated, September 3, 2002

by Ray Bradbury (Author)

4.6 352 ratings

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Ray Bradbury, America's most beloved storyteller, has spent a lifetime carrying readers to exhilarating and dangerous places, from dark street comers in unfamiliar cities and towns to the edge of the universe. Now, in an extraordinary flight of the imagination a half-century in the making, he takes us to a most wondrous destination: into the heart of an Eternal Family.

They have lived for centuries in a house of legend and mystery in upper Illinois -- and they are not like other midwesterners. Rarely encountered in daylight hours, their children are curious and wild; their old ones have survived since before the Sphinx first sank its paws deep in Egyptian sands. And some sleep in beds with lids.

Now the house is being readied in anticipation of the gala homecoming that will gather together the farflung branches of this odd and remarkable family. In the past-midnight stillness can be detected the soft fluttering of Uncle Einars wings. From her realm of sleep, Cecy, the fairest and most special daughter, can feel the approach of many a welcome being -- shapeshifter, telepath, somnambulist, vampire -- as she flies high in the consciousness of bird and bat.

But in the midst of eager anticipation, a sense of doom pervades. For the world is changing. And death, no stranger, will always shadow this most singular family: Father, arisen from the Earth; Mother, who never sleeps but dreams; A Thousand Times Great Grandmére; Grandfather, who keeps the wildness of youth between his ears.

And the boy who, more than anyone, carries the burden of time on his shoulders: Timothy, the sad and different foundling son who must share it all, remember, and tell...and who, alone out of all of them, must one day age and wither and die.

By turns lyrical, wistful, poignant, and chilling, From the Dust Returned is the long-awaited new novel by the peerless Ray Bradbury -- a book that will surely be numbered among his most enduring masterworks.

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publisher

William Morrow Paperbacks
Publication date

September 3, 2002
Dimensions

4.19 x 0.72 x 6.75 inches
ISBN-10

0380789612
ISBN-13

978-0380789610
Lexile measure

890L
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About the Author

In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. An Emmy Award winner for his teleplay The Halloween Tree and an Academy Award nominee, he was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Morrow Paperbacks (September 3, 2002)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0380789612
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0380789610
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 890L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.19 x 0.72 x 6.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #708,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #276 in Science Fiction Short Stories
- #1,597 in Science Fiction Anthologies (Books)
- #12,658 in Short Stories (Books)

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4.6 352 ratings

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Ray Bradbury

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In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury, who died on June 5, 2012, at the age of 91, inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. He wrote the screen play for John Huston's classic film adaptation of Moby Dick, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television's The Ray Bradbury Theater, and won an Emmy for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.

Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, "Live forever!" Bradbury later said, "I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped."

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4.6 out of 5

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AmazonUser

Great book.

Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2023

Visionary.

Prose that is typically, beautifully Bradbury

Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2004

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I love passionately the incomparable writing style of Ray Bradbury. His imagery and descriptions are always unique in a way that no other author has been able to approach. It's like comparing a dense fudge to plain, cakey brownies; hey, you gotta love brownies but the fudge will blow them out of the water every time.

The Elliot family is a motley collection of supernatural beings from every corner of the planet. For whatever reason, they have picked a house out in the middle of Nowhere, America to collect and settle in for their regular (once or twice a century) gatherings. The core family, Mother, Father, Grandmere, Grandpere, Cecy and Tommy, remain to hold the fort in between. Little mortal Tommy is the only one who doesn't fit in, but only because he was adopted; and oh, what he wouldn't give to be able to fly like Uncle Einar or change bodies like Cecy! For the enchantment he feels when listening to Grandmere's stories of the Family is made up of good old-fashioned wonder and love.

Bradbury's recent book From the Dust Returned is exactly as rich and magical as I would have expected from this author. Small wonder, as he has had decades to perfect every well-honed metaphor. This slow is apparently an advantage to character development and visualization, but a plot cobbled together of several previously published short stories does leave the storyline weakened. Still, for Bradbury devotees like me it is not to be missed. Would you pass up a chocolately ganache torte just because somebody left out the pecans? I would hope not.

-lil' readin' sprite

11 people found this helpful

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Heather Beebe

A magical journey

Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2018

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I found the book on the shelf of a tiny branch library in a deserted town where all the business and shops had closed. I’d wondered aloud in the library if everyone in the town in the tiny houses who never came out were actually vampires? Such a desolate place I moved to, and then I found this book that seems to chronicle the entire town as if it were one single house. I took it down from the shelf, and each page was like a window peering into the strange goings-on behind closed doors. As a child, I loved The Addams Family, and never knew that the beginning began with Ray Bradbury as well, and his stories of the Elliots. What a welcome relief from boredom this book is, as I daily walk in this desolate town where no one comes out until after dark. I keep hoping that Uncle Einar will swoop down and lift me up in his wings and we can fly away, or that Cecy will jump behind my eyes and show me what is truly possible here. This book makes my own imagination want to soar far above this undead suburban landscape.

20 people found this helpful

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J. Sexton

Atmospheric dark fantasy

Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2019

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I have long loved Ray Bradbury's writing. One of the earliest fantasy/science fiction books I read was The Martian Chronicles. From the Dust Returned reminds me of that book with its loosely connected stories that are linked through their themes. The theme of this book is darker with a family of odd characters, some darkly so.

The unifying characters are daughter Cecy whose mind wanders the earth and son Timothy. He'd be considered "normal" by most people, but he is the one who is different and carefully loved by his family.

I would suggest this book to people who are fans of Ray Bradbury or people who enjoy atmospheric dark fantasy. It isn't as good as The Martian Chronicles in my opinion, hence the four stars instead of five.

2 people found this helpful

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SQ

A Must Read Book

Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2022

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Ray Bradbury is an amazing writer and this book will have you hooked from page one.

One person found this helpful

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Tami

Enjoyable, as always

Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2021

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Bradbury sure could weave a tale. This is a more or less collaboration with Charles Addams about a similar ghoulish family; Bradbury’s Family is more esoteric and the prose lyrical. Fun read.

Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2021

Verified Purchase

Great story by a great storyteller. Bradbury makes the great mysteries in life feel knowable in ways that give hope if only by way of saying what can’t be understood together makes us that much less alone.

Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2021

Verified Purchase

Funny and witty. What an imagination. I would if loved it better except my dog ate the cover and the first 6 pages so I had to Google the beginning 😂

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M. Y. JULIAN-JONES

Weird and Wonderful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 18, 2020

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I really enjoyed these stories of the House and its Family: the influence on /of Charles Addams is readily apparent, which I loved, and I really enjoyed the ambiguity and open-ended nebulous feel of the stories. I like how the shorts that stand alone have been woven into the book with small interlinking chapters.

Timothy and Cecy are my favourite characters throughout the book, although there is no coherent plot except for Timothy’s gradual growing up and growing into his own path of life.

Standout chapters/stories for me were the ghastly passenger on the Orient Express, the wild cousins trapped in Grandpère’s head, Cecy wanting to fall in love, and Uncle Einar the winged man.

The ghastly passenger was my favourite as a story, and a concept. I loved the idea of feeding on belief, how a spectral apparition is solid and real but fades and withers in the face of relentless rationality that sucks the (un)life from it. It read to me like a love story with folklore and folk-belief, especially those things by which we are most frightened, mourning its loss as an enriching part of childhood and human experience. That England was its saving grace, a place where such beliefs linger and are nurtured, made me really sad. That’s a very idealised view of England which I’m not sure is true or ever was true, but I’d like it to be. England was as ‘rational’ as Germany etc at the time the story is set, so I didn’t think that worked more than as authorial wish-fulfilment. It would be nice to think that folklore (and folk horror) is now appreciated here again, though!

I think this ties in with Timothy’s childhood at the House: growing up spooky but choosing to live a full life ‘like others do’ resonated with me. You can be enriched by an awareness of death, mortality and immortality, and all the things in the world and beyond it which defy explanation, but you do have to choose how you live your own life, too. There’s a sense in which you leave these things behind and a sense in which you always carry them with you, both at once.

Some of these tales are not for everyone, I think, and not all of them struck a chord with me. I really liked this as a whole collection though, as (deliberately) disjointed and incomplete-jigsaw a book this is!

FictionFan

Creatures of the night...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 20, 2016

Verified Purchase

Usually I give a short blurb at the beginning of my reviews, but I found it exceptionally hard with this one because basically the book isn't really about anything discernible. Lots of creatures of the night and weird people with strange powers (maybe werewolves and vampires – I really have no idea) are en route to a family homecoming at the Elliot house in Illinois. While there, we will be told a few stories about some of them which seem to be almost entirely unlinked to each other but for the repeated appearance of a few of the characters.

I'm guessing you've already worked out that this book didn't exactly thrill me. Fantasy is always a big ask for me, but at least most fantasy has some kind of story. The book apparently originated as short stories written over a long period of time which Bradbury then brought together in 2001, writing linking portions to try to give it some kind of coherent structure. This is the same way as Bradbury's much earlier (by half a century) The Martian Chronicles evolved – a book I thought was truly wonderful despite the fragmentary feel of it. Unfortunately, it doesn't work quite as well with this one. Firstly, with one or two exceptions, the separate stories aren't terribly interesting; and, secondly, there doesn't seem to be much of an overarching theme to outweigh the weakness of the linking.

The main residents of the house are a mummy known as One Thousand Times Great-Grandmère, Cecy, a girl who can dream herself into other people, Mother and Father (nope, got nothing to say about them at all) and a mortal boy, Timothy, who was taken in by the family when he was abandoned and now dreams of one day having wings like his Uncle Einar. Later Grandpère appears too – OTTG-G's husband. Most of the stories involve one or other of these characters plus an array of other characters who tend to make only one appearance.

If there is a theme, I think it might be that Bradbury is regretting the passing of belief in tales of the supernatural – sometimes comparing it to the loss of childhood, sometimes suggesting a kind of connection with the growth of atheism. But I think I may be looking too hard. Perhaps we're just supposed to enjoy it for what it is. And maybe people who like fantasy more than I do will indeed enjoy it. Some of the descriptive writing is great, though sometimes it becomes rather overblown. I enjoyed the stories that had more of an actual story – the one where Cecy inhabits a young woman's body in order to experience falling in love, for instance; or the story about the ghost, fading because of people's lack of belief in the supernatural, and the nurse who helps him on his journey to Scotland, where he hopes that superstition still thrives enough to save him. But others are really just a series of descriptions and odd little vignettes that left me searching for the elusive point.

I think it might have worked better had it just been left as a book of short stories – the attempt to link them actually highlighted the unevenness of quality and lack of depth of meaning. Nope, I'm afraid this just wasn't my kind of thing. Ah, well! 2½ stars for me, so rounded up.

2 people found this helpful

Joel M.

If you like "Something Wicked This Way Comes" or "Dandelion Wine" you ...

Reviewed in Canada on June 22, 2017

Verified Purchase

A delightful example of Ray Bradbury's ability to describe events and scenes in an extraordinary way. If you like "Something Wicked This Way Comes" or "Dandelion Wine" you will likely enjoy this book. There are moments of 'What is he talking about' but if you just keep reading the imagery will become clear and often with a moment of awe. I found the story to be a clever mix of current and ancient lore involving a great cast of characters. Readers unfamiliar with Bradbury's work might not appreciate the style of writing but for a few dollars I think it is worth a try.

Kindle Customer

From the Ashes

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 31, 2020

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Poetical, magical, lyrical. Typical Bradbury, painting a landscape of mythical, phantasmagorical creatures that seem close to our hearts yet aeons away. Wonderful.

Gail Dundurn

From The Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury

Reviewed in Canada on November 13, 2018

Verified Purchase

I absolutely adore the stories of Ray Bradbury. His imagination conjured so many fantastic places, people, and adventures, and this book showcases them all. A wondrous tale of a young boy raised in a haunted house by ethereal parents and their dead relatives. One cousin lives in the attic, slumbering upon ancient sands from the Sahara Desert, while her spirit travels to far away places, times, and dimensions. If you are a fan of Ray Bradbury, this book is not to be missed.

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