Ray Bradbury is truly the master of the short story. Not a single story in this book could be considered lacking. They range from whimsical to horrifying, from humorous to shocking.
This unique, if disturbing, collection of short stories presents some of Bradbury's best: it highlights his most celebrated features, including his rich tapestry-like, descriptive prose, combined with his uncanny ability to make the mundane fear-inspiring. His beautiful, thought-provoking and visual style of writing definitely enhances these creative, rather off-the-wall stories.
From a beloved family pet, to everyday farming implements, to a (seemingly) demonic infant bent on parricide, to a "thing" in a jar, which seemingly resembles something different to each person who views it, recalling unsettling incidents from their past, Bradbury, like some other illustrious horror writer (in this case, perhaps more "suspense" than horror), makes the everyday and familiar chilling and unsettling, which is perhaps the perfect ambiance for Halloween! This collection of vignettes with characters from all walks of life is sure to find something that each and every reader can identify with, in sometimes-startlingly familiar ways.
Originally published in the 1950s, Bradbury's collection is really timeless: many of these short snapshots could be any point in time, enough to appeal to audiences far into the future. There aren't really any of his quintessential sci-fi stories in this particular volume, however; this one is much more "down to earth!" As stated above, its appeal is that it relatable to just about everyone in some respect.
This isn't one of my more comprehensive reviews, as it's difficult to delve too deeply into the individual stories, considering their length, but suffice to say, this is a great collection if you're looking to read something in short sessions, as each story is short, but self-contained, and thought-provoking enough to leave readers with something afterward. It's definitely not one (for me, at least!) to read just before bedtime, unless you want to have some unsettling, if vivid dreams.
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I knew I was on the path to immortality. Or the sort of immortality that counts, being remembered here and there in your time while alive, existing a few years after your death beyond all that.
From a beloved family pet, to everyday farming implements, to a (seemingly) demonic infant bent on parricide, to a "thing" in a jar, which seemingly resembles something different to each person who views it, recalling unsettling incidents from their past, Bradbury, like some other illustrious horror writer (in this case, perhaps more "suspense" than horror), makes the everyday and familiar chilling and unsettling, which is perhaps the perfect ambiance for Halloween! This collection of vignettes with characters from all walks of life is sure to find something that each and every reader can identify with, in sometimes-startlingly familiar ways.
Originally published in the 1950s, Bradbury's collection is really timeless: many of these short snapshots could be any point in time, enough to appeal to audiences far into the future. There aren't really any of his quintessential sci-fi stories in this particular volume, however; this one is much more "down to earth!" As stated above, its appeal is that it relatable to just about everyone in some respect.
This isn't one of my more comprehensive reviews, as it's difficult to delve too deeply into the individual stories, considering their length, but suffice to say, this is a great collection if you're looking to read something in short sessions, as each story is short, but self-contained, and thought-provoking enough to leave readers with something afterward. It's definitely not one (for me, at least!) to read just before bedtime, unless you want to have some unsettling, if vivid dreams.
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I knew I was on the path to immortality. Or the sort of immortality that counts, being remembered here and there in your time while alive, existing a few years after your death beyond all that.
This is vintage Bradbury: an eclectic compilation of his early stories with a recurrent theme: death. Loaded with non-sentences and crude metaphorssometimes barely coherentlike a dime novelist trying to be Updike. Some have an interesting twist; others are just weird. Some took me back to his early comic book stories. You have to be a Bradbury enthusiast.
THE OCTOBER COUNTRY is many places: a picturesque Mexican village where death is a tourist attraction; a city beneath the city where drowned lovers are silently reunited; a carnival midway where a tiny man's most cherished fantasy can be fulfilled night after night. THE OCTOBER COUNTRY'S inhabitants live, dream, work, die--and sometimes live again--discovering, often too late, the high price of citizenship. Here a glass jar can hold memories and nightmares; a woman's newborn child can plot murder; and a man's skeleton can war against him. Here there is no escaping the dark stranger who lives upstairs...or the reaper who wields the world. Each of these stories is a wonder, imagined by an acclaimed tale-teller writing from a place shadows. But there is astonishing beauty in these shadows, born from a prose that enchants and enthralls. Ray Bradbury's THE OCTOBER COUNTRY is a land of metaphors that can chill like a long-after-midnight wind...as they lift the reader high above a sleeping Earth on the strange wings of Uncle Einar.
