The April witch

Here's an odd but interesting idea: take some short stories, remove them from their original anthologies and re-print them in individual specially designed volumes. The idea seems to be to allow the story to shine its own light and not be over-shadowed or out-shone by the other stories in the anthologies. Further, I think, the idea was to create physically beautiful books.

This project, going by this one volume alone, was a partial success; the literary merit of this story comes out clearly to me. I'd read it before, somewhere, being a Bradbury fan through-out my teens, but it had not stuck in my memory the way more famous works such as Zero Hour or A Sound of Thunder had. It's a delicate story, fragile, apt to be torn apart in the slightest breeze from a passing fictional sky-rocket such as The Veldt. Giving it its own space works. The melancholic mood of the story somehow evades falling into the Pit of Maudlin that awaits such works and instead climbs the Hill of Poignancy as we share the yearnings of a young, lonely, isolated witch, one Spring evening. The writing, as should only be expected, is beautiful and uniquely Bradbury's own; a delight.

The possible other objective, of creating a book as beautiful as the story it contains, was for me at least, a complete failure. The illustrations do nothing for me, in fact detract by being unappealing. I'm not very sensitive to typefaces, either, so the careful choice made here is a bit wasted on me. Other aspects of the design are unremarkable, accept for one; the author and title printed at the top of each set of facing pages in most books are at the bottom in this one, which I don't like. On the other hand, the page numbers are at the top, which I prefer to the more common placing at the bottom.

I was given an overdue reminder of Bradbury's mastery by this book. Time to read more.