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gareth_alan 's review for:
The October Country
by Ray Bradbury
A collection of 19 macabre short stories from Bradders. Published in 1955, around the same time as Marty McFly went back in time, these stories easily hold up today. The language, the descriptions, the characters - it would all still work just as well if the stories were written exactly the same but set in present day.
The stories are mostly themed on horror or fantasy with a few bizarre tales chucked in. The stand-out stories for me were The Dwarf, about a dwarf who frequently visits a hall of mirrors at a carnival to look at himself in a mirror that makes him tall. Skeleton, about a man convinced his skeleton is trying to do him harm. The Wind, about a man convinced that the wind is following him and trying to kill him. And then there's The Scythe, a haunting tale about the job of Death.
Most of the tales have grim endings, which I often enjoy more than happy endings because I'm a miserable get. Even though the stories are short and you don't have time to get to know the characters, Bradbury writes them so well that by the time the bleak ending comes, you are left feeling for them.
Now, I would have given this 4 stars, but there are a couple of stories in the collection that let it down a little. I wouldn't call them duds, but they lack the magic of the good ones. The ones that I didn't enjoy were The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse, Touched With Fire, and There Was An Old Woman. They weren't particularity bad, I just found them a little boring. But they were easy to get through with them all being around 10-14 pages long.
So yes, this was a good introduction to Ray Bradbury for me and I'll be looking out for more stuff by him.
The stories are mostly themed on horror or fantasy with a few bizarre tales chucked in. The stand-out stories for me were The Dwarf, about a dwarf who frequently visits a hall of mirrors at a carnival to look at himself in a mirror that makes him tall. Skeleton, about a man convinced his skeleton is trying to do him harm. The Wind, about a man convinced that the wind is following him and trying to kill him. And then there's The Scythe, a haunting tale about the job of Death.
Most of the tales have grim endings, which I often enjoy more than happy endings because I'm a miserable get. Even though the stories are short and you don't have time to get to know the characters, Bradbury writes them so well that by the time the bleak ending comes, you are left feeling for them.
Now, I would have given this 4 stars, but there are a couple of stories in the collection that let it down a little. I wouldn't call them duds, but they lack the magic of the good ones. The ones that I didn't enjoy were The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse, Touched With Fire, and There Was An Old Woman. They weren't particularity bad, I just found them a little boring. But they were easy to get through with them all being around 10-14 pages long.
So yes, this was a good introduction to Ray Bradbury for me and I'll be looking out for more stuff by him.