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4.04 AVERAGE
4.04 AVERAGE
I didn't much enjoy this book in the beginning, but as I listened to these stories flow, and started to notice the trends and themes of the stories I began to enjoy them a lot.
medium-paced
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
dark
funny
relaxing
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
4.75 stars**
The perfect read for late October and a successful first venture into Bradbury's works.
My favorite stories in this book were The Jar, The Small Assassin, Jack-in-the-Box, The Scythe, There Was an Old Woman, and Homecoming.
The perfect read for late October and a successful first venture into Bradbury's works.
My favorite stories in this book were The Jar, The Small Assassin, Jack-in-the-Box, The Scythe, There Was an Old Woman, and Homecoming.
This collection of short stories was pretty good, but for every one that I really enjoyed there were two more that I didn't really care for.
dark
funny
mysterious
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
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 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.
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 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.
I think it didn't help that I was a massive fan of The Martian Chronicles. I also didn't realise this was a reprint of a bunch of his very early short stories, whereas TMC was later on. There were a few stories I ended up skimming through, or some with no actual endings, but the highlights were: The Lake, The Emissary, The Small Assassin, Jack in the Box, The Scythe, Uncle Einar, The Man Upstairs and Homecoming. Two stars are for Homecoming and The Lake alone. An extra star was for the prose itself. Even if the story was dull, the author remains one of the best storytellers around with a beautiful style of prose.
I was pleasantly surprised by this enchanting collection; while I've always known Bradbury to be a great writer and a champion of fantastic fiction, I've had less exposure to his work than I'd like to admit so I wasn't entirely certain what "The October Country" would have in store for me. This is a volume of quiet, textural, sometimes hilarious and often melancholic tales with a heavy focus on death and loss as its most central unifying thread, and its presence can be felt hanging like a shadow over each one of these stories. Bradbury's prose is simplistic and almost fit for younger readers (a style which he'd later perfect in the brilliant "Something Wicked This Way Comes") but it is never boring or dull in the slightest, and Bradbury is a master in the art of evocation; his clear adoration and enthusiasm for language and literary form just courses through this book's veins and bleeds off of every page, resulting in a collection with a poetic sensibility deeply rooted in the kind of Americana one can tell Bradbury so clearly epitomizes just through reading his words alone. With the days getting shorter and colder and the trees all now thoroughly colorful, there's no better time to give this a read (as the title suggests).