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

The darkly fascinating tales in this collection both entrance and repugn. They will keep you awake for hours, deliberating on what they reveal of the nature of our world. They will give you nightmares. They will give you hope. They will make you consider how you live your life. Ray Bradbury is one of the best science fiction authors I have read. And, though these are not science fiction, they are among the best short stories of any kind that I have read.

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

This is a collection of nineteen short stories written mainly in the 1940s-1950s as far as I'm aware by the master of lyrical fantasy/supernatural/science fiction. Some are not in that vein at all, their disturbing nature coming from the cruelty of human beings as in the opening story, 'The Dwarf', or in the sadness of lost love and bonds left behind in childhood ('The Lake'). A couple of others evoke an Addams Family type mood with non-human beings that still struggle to hang on in an increasingly mechanised world - 'Uncle Einar' and 'The Homecoming'.

Some are grotesques as in the story about a woman obsessing about her baby being a monster - but is she right? And 'The Jar' and 'The Skeleton'. I liked the disquieting ones such as 'The show more Crowd', an idea I remember being anthologised in an old TV series and 'The Emissary' which I remembered reading from many years ago but which has stuck in my memory unlike so many other things I've read. 'The Scythe' is quite a chilling tale with a novel explanation for the evils of the 20th century and, by implication, ours. A few didn't quite engage me such as the odd story about the poker chip and the one about the wind which for me was too predictable. But overall I am awarding this four stars. show less

This might be a re-read... but for the most part, I had forgotten much of what I read here from way back in the day.

No matter.

It's odd. I've changed as a reader. These slow and gently transformative stories are... prosaic. They don't grab me as much as they might have, years ago. Indeed, I dropped a star for that reason. But I still found enough to love in them that I didn't just despair from boredom.

For one, I'm familiar enough with so many movies and tv shows and even music to exclaim... "Hey! They took that from Bradbury!" or "Hey! Someone really ran with a Bradbury idea and made it deadly!" or "This is superior to Bradbury!"

Ahem. Bradbury has great ideas! Bradbury has wonderful prose! Yes. But he's also mild. I love writers that show more take ideas and do something extraordinary, and back when these were written, that was probably the case.

Something to consider: His story "Touched with Fire" has a great, perhaps apocryphal, line about more murders occurring at 92 degrees F than any other temperature. It was used in the 70's B movie It Came From Outer Space. And then it was used in a great song by Siouxsie and the Banshees.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIqyVsZGxi0

I was all, like... I love that song! Another fun fact, Siouxsie's punk music also does full tributes to Stephen King and Shakespeare. Much love. :)

Oh, I hated the story "The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone" :)

Everything else was fine, if not super-grabbing. :) show less