The October Country

4/5

The October Country is a short story collection from Ray Bradbury's early writing days that have a centering around stories that are 'horrifying' or 'macabre' in a stereotypical 1940's fashion. Though through my own reading, the horrifying elements that are found in most of these tales are internal in nature. The terrifying ways in which our own mind can play tricks on us, warping our perception of ourselves, our immediate situation, or other people in our lives.

Mental health (or emotional fears/fixations) is the true terror that can strike any one of us at anytime, not the ghost in our closet or the vampire in our basement. Whether Bradbury was intentional in this effect is something that I can not say, but I have a hard time show more reading these stories believably with any other lens. Anxiety(The Next in Line), hypochondria(Skeleton), loneliness(The Emissary), post-partum depression(The Small Assassin), rubbernecking(The Crowd), PTSD(The Wind), body dismorphia(The Dwarf), or jealousy(The Jar). The list goes on. These stories read as horrifying as they do because of how relatable and real the struggles of the characters are. The collection is very ahead of it's time in this way, retaining a lot of its value despite its age.

Unfortunately, Bradbury feels the need to go beyond these internal and deeply human realities. Most of the stories here conclude with a twist ending, usually something that was telegraphed from the very beginning. This twist moves the conclusion towards something much more supernatural or fantastic. The old man up the stairs really was a vampire, it wasn't just the child's fear of the unknown. The little baby was actually the spawn of Lucifer, it wasn't just the mother dealing with an upending of their emotional and physical labor. Perhaps this is an emblem of the time that the stories were written. Bradbury needed a check and he knew what would sell. I still can't help but think that these cheesy endings brought each story down a bit. They feel completely superfluous, and have the added effect of making the stories too similar in structure to one another.

All that being said, I think The October Country is still Bradbury at his finest. He is a master of the short story form, crafting short and clear arcs that leave me feeling satisfied upon their conclusion. His prose style is excellent, crafting sentences of true elegance. He lucidly places you into the world that he creates, describing the senses in a way that is both believable and fantastical. In addition, the stories gathered for this collection are not only evenly high in quality but fit together well in creating broader themes. There are only a few stories that I can say were mild disappointments, which is more than I can say for most collections or anthologies. There's a part of me that wished I had waited to read The October Country until the autumn season, but having it shine so brightly now made me confident that it doesn't need external mood to prop itself up on. show less

I'm not a huge fan of short stories. Those which are a peek into a tantalizing side-show exasperate me when the tent flap closes. Others require too much investment for the pay-off. That said, some stories mark one forever, like a bicycle spill when you're ten years old and the concrete shaves your elbow. In October Country, the Lake is one of those stories. Bradbury sets the mood with a few deft brush strokes - a summer-spot boardwalk post Labor Day, shuttered stands and empty arcades, and then creates one of the tenderest meditations on love past and love present. With all the succinct passing beauty of a shooting star. The Lake alone is worth the purchase of this collection.

To say that I loved this book is an understatement. Here is a book I will covet and revisit each Autumn. I will need to cleanse my brain of all toxic books and reward myself. I am looking forward to revisiting this spooky collection every end of summer like a tradition.

Bradbury dropped so many gems here it is incredible. Even something so simple is written so eloquent and profound, like he writes with the feather of an angel while the devil looks over his shoulder. He dug deep into the morbid terrains with these stories, his horror downright shocked me, as I still see this adorable old man penning Dandelion Wine. This is nothing of the sort!

See below for example of deeply vivid imagery that resonated with my psych:
“In the hall, on show more her way downstairs, Mother dropped a champagne bottle. Edwin heard and was cold, for the thought that jumped through his head was, That’s how mother’d sound. If she fell, if she broke, you’d find a million fragments in the morning. Bright crystal and clear wine on the parquet flooring, that’s all you’d see at dawn."

and another : for good measure!

“He raged for hours. And the skeleton, ever the frail and solemn philosopher, hung quietly inside, saying not a word, suspended like a delicate insect within a chrysalis, waiting and waiting.”

How about one paragraph that can draw you into another dimension completely? See below!

“Four children were born, three boys and a girl, who, for their energy, seemed to have wings. They popped up like toadstools in a few years, and on hot summer days asked their father to sit under the apple tree and fan them with his cooling wings and tell them wild starlit tales of island clouds and ocean skies and textures of mist and wind and how a star tastes melting in your mouth, and how to drink cold mountain air, and how it feels to be a pebble dropped from Mt. Everest, turning to a green bloom, flowering your wings just before you strike bottom!”

The imagery that short paragraph stirs up inside my mind is… well it has left me speechless! Ray Bradbury was a magician, a wizard of words. He held secret dimensions in his brain, galaxies far beyond our reach.
I miss him, and I always will. No one holds a light to his words. He will always be, by far, my favorite author! No one comes close to ever replacing him.
Farewell for now. show less

Bradbury is best known as a writer of science fiction, but most of the stories in this collection qualify as horror of one kind or another. It's a very effective collection of horror, in fact, largely because, over and over, it forces the reader to look mortality squarely in the face. "The Next in Line," for instance, features a description of mummified corpses in a Mexican cemetery that I'm pretty sure is going to haunt me for quite a while, not because it's gross or Halloween-scary, but because there's no escaping the awful, certain knowledge that one day, this will be you. And then there's "Skeleton," featuring a man freaking out at the realization that there is a skeleton inside him, which had me squirming uncomfortably in my chair show more feeling acutely, distressingly aware of my own skull and kneecaps. Some of the stories are more subtle, and some less so, but as a whole, it's a collection that really gets under your skin. So to speak. show less

Skeleton', 'The Jar', 'The Man Upstairs' and 'The Small Assassin'. All classic tales from a master of fantastic fiction.

Herein, the nostalgic whimsy that permeates so much of Ray Bradbury's work is largely dispensed with, to be replaced with horror. Pure and simple horror of the most macabre variety. The familiar becomes alien, innocence becomes corrupt and love becomes a thing of bittersweet pain in a collection comprising some of Bradbury's finest short work.

These are tales that linger in the mind long after the book has been closed, the writer's masterful use of language conjuring images that will never be forgotten. One of many outstanding stories on offer, 'The Lake' (Ray Bradbury's first professional short story sale) is, in show more particular, a beautifully written elegy to the pain and longing of first love, and the lifelong grief that loss can bring.

By turns beautiful, horrific and mesmerising. Here are tales that evoke all manner of emotions perfectly.

Macabre fiction, crafted beautifully by a true, greatly-missed legend of genre fiction. show less

I’m not a huge fan of short story collections, but this is by far one of my favorites. I love Bradbury’s work and these 19 stories are a stellar example of his skill. Equal parts creepy and poignant this stories dive into the dark hearts of ordinary people. From the terrifying look at parenthood in “The Small Assassin” to the aching desire to be someone other than yourself in “The Dwarf” I couldn’t put it down.

“The Lake,” “The Scythe” and “The Emissary” are all eerie tales you could tell around a camp fire. In “The Wind” I could feel my pulse quicken as I turned the pages. Bradbury has a way of writing such vivid descriptions you feel like you’re sitting right there experiencing the story alongside the show more characters. Read this paragraph and tell me it doesn’t paint an incredible image in your head…

“She ripped a dog-eared packet of cheap cigarettes like it was a bone with meat on it, snapped one of the cigarettes in her smeared mouth and lit it, sucking greedily on the smoke, jetting it through her thin nostrils until she was a feverish dragon confronting them in a fire-clouded room.”

BOTTOM LINE: Just fantastic! Short stories aren’t for everyone, but these gems are worth trying out. This would be a perfect book to pick up around Halloween.

Complete list of stories in this collection: The Dwarf, The Next in Line, The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse, Skeleton, The Jar, The Lake, The Emissary, Touched with Fire, The Small Assassin, The Crowd, Jack-in-the-Box, The Scythe, Uncle Einar, The Wind, The Man Upstairs, There Was an Old Woman, The Cistern, Homecoming, and The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone show less

Bradbury’s lyrical horror has aged pretty well, with the exception of a really stereotypical portrayal of an African-American in one story, complete with terrible dialogue (that’s not how AAVE works!). Men generally treat women with condescension, but they are not portrayed as right in doing so; their indifference to what women think is just part of the horror that our indifference to the subjectivity of others helps create. Bradbury’s repeating use of circuses, freak shows, exotic-to-the-protagonist locations, etc. helps highlight that the ordinary human heart is where the worst fears and hatreds lurk in his stories.