The October Country: Stories

I remember as a kid watching Ray Brasburys Theater and was excited when my son said he wanted to read this book of short stories. He read it in 2 days and kept walking into my room to tell me how much he loves how Ray Bradbury writes. How he described every detail of these horror stories in a way that he could picture it all and really feel he was there. We are a household that likes thrillers and horror. So I'd recommend this book.

I was missing some of the Bradbury stories I read as a child and picked this up, not remembering if it held any of my favorites. All of the stories were new to me, and completely delightful--in each, Bradbury chooses an imaginative theme and iterates on it with beautiful, visceral language. The stories are classic weird fiction/dark fantasy, and reminded me also of the Hitchcock curated stories I read as a kid. Of these 18 stories, many of my favorites were in the second half of the book.The Dwarf--3 stars--a woman tries to help a little person being bullied by her coworker at the pier carnival, with disastrous results.The Next in Line--4 stars--husband and wife on a vacation in Mexico visit the mummies in the local cemetery: people whose families can't afford to pay the rent on their graves. After seeing them lined up in the catacomb a rift grows between the husband and wife, and slowly undoes them. Classic descent-into-madness story.The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse--3 stars--a short, comedic satire about one conventional man's obsession with the young intelligentsia.Skeleton--5 stars--A man at war with his own skeleton. The ending is priceless, and though the premise is absurd, I found myself having had the same strange thoughts at one time or another in my own life.The Jar--4 stars--A farmer buys a freakish specimen suspended in a jar to impress his neighbors at home, who gather nightly to speculate on what it might be. I loved that the different guesses of the townsfolk were stand-ins for our different ways of seeing the world. Also, Bradbury is such a master of descriptive prose.The Lake--4 stars--Childhood friends separated, but not forever, by death. Poignant and beautiful.The Emissary--5 stars--One of my favorite stories. The dog of a bedridden boy roams the outside world and brings back the smells of everything on his fur. Sometimes too, the dog brings the boy companions, both welcome and strange.Touched with Fire--3 stars--Short story about two old men who try to help a cantankerous woman undesirous of interference. Funny and entertaining.The Small Assassin--2 stars--I'm never a huge fan of stories about mothers and fathers whose babies are out to get them.The Crowd--5 stars--Lovely, intriguing, creepy premise about the people who crowd around car accidents.Jack-in-the-Box--4 stars--A recluse mother and her boy, who doesn't know that he's a recluse. She's raised him to think that the house is the universe, the different stories and rooms are countries and lands, and that out in the trees and beyond them, there are beasts who would rend the boy to pieces. More beautiful descriptions, though modern readers will probably feel that this story has been done many times.The Scythe--3 stars--Bradbury's take on the Grim Reaper.Uncle Einar--4 stars--A man with wings has a mid-life crisis.The Wind--3 stars--A man is persecuted by the wind. (In this story as in all of Bradbury's stories, the speculative element is used to enhance the humanity of the characters--this story is actually about friendship, and the guilt of not being there for your old friend when he needs you most)The Man Upstairs--4 stars--Delicious sinister story about a boy and the new mysterious boarder in his grandmother's house.There Was An Old Woman--5 stars--An old woman who sees the man in black coming for her, and refuses to die. Aunt Tildy is a wonderfully drawn, hilarious character.The Cistern--4 stars--A short but beautiful love story about two dead people in the sewer.Homecoming--5 stars--This is the kind of story I remember loving Bradbury for. A family of vampires, (sort of, they drink blood but have other fantastic talents as well), has a reunion. Unfortunately for Timothy, the only human member of his family, the reunion brings to life all of his embarrassment and longing. Again, the story is about what it's like to be 14-years-old, couched in the great creativity of Bradbury's fantastic descriptions and characters.The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone--4 stars--Not really speculative, but a meditation on literary success and failure. The characters reminded me of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and as always the imagery was vivid and beautiful.

An excellent collection of short stories, only two of which I can live without, humorous yarns that I believe are less than what Bradbury excelled at: mood. The best is The Lake, a short story that packs a tremendous wallop. I hadn't read it in about fifty years. It was as great as I recalled. It says so much about childhood, loss, melancholy, time. love... Nice cover and interior illustrations, as well.

Ray Bradbury's The October Country is often held up as the closest Bradbury ever came to doing a horror anthology, and while not every story here is a dark one, there's no shortage of nightmares here. There's "Skeleton," in which a man becomes horrifying aware of the bones within his body and becomes convinced that they're trying to take over his life; there's the surprisingly nasty ending of "The Man Upstairs," in which a young boy becomes convinced that the lodger living upstairs in a vampire; and there's "The Small Assassin," about a possibly murderous infant, and a story that has one of the nastiest last lines in memory. In other words, there's plenty of darkness here, and while Bradbury isn't going to be mistaken for the full-fledged horror of a King or a Barker, there's some wonderfully dark, Gothic material here.But more than that, there's the imagination and heart that Bradbury was so known for, and no story better unifies those ideas than the wonderful "Homecoming." A favorite of Neil Gaiman's (and the influence on Gaiman's world is evident), "Homecoming" tells the story of a family of monsters - vampires, ghosts, and more - coming together for a family reunion, all told from the perspective of the one "normal" child in the family. It's sweet, heartbreaking, and ends on an optimistic and heartfelt note that made me smile. Or take "The Emissary," about a young boy, confined to his room because of sickness, who experiences the world entirely through his roaming dog and the visitors he brings home - a story that opens with wonder and heart, slowly turns to heartbreak, and then becomes terrifying. And that's not all - once you add to the collection some stories that show off Bradbury's rich sense of humor - the elderly woman who refuses to die in "There Was an Old Woman," or the ridiculous satire of trend followers that is "The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse" - and you have a wonderful collection that reminds you what made Bradbury so special.

THE OCTOBER COUNTRY is one of the great American books by one of the 20th Century's finest prose stylists. Ray Bradbury was a wonder and a world treasure.

The October Country (1955) is a classic collection of macabre short stories by Ray Bradbury. The 19 tales here are:The DwarfThe Next In LineThe Watchful Poker Chip of H MatisseSkeletonThe JarThe LakeThe EmissaryTouched With FireThe Small AssassinThe CrowdJack-in-the-BoxThe ScytheUncle Einar (part of the Elliott family saga)The WindThe Man UpstairsThere Was An Old WomanThe CisternHomecoming (part of the Elliott family saga)The Wonderful Death of Dudley StoneRay Bradbury is the Godfather of all things Halloween and Carnivalesque and within this collection you will find magic and mystery, crisp autumn leaves and the smoky smell of bonfires on an autumn day, fairground rides and carnival oddities, and strange forces of nature. You may want to check the contents of the edition you are purchasing, as I have come across editions with only 11 and 17 of the stories as opposed to the full list (the Kindle edition does contain the full 19 tales). I would also recommend the short story, The October Game (1948), and the novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962).

This is the first thing I've read by Bradbury and it didn't disappoint.As with all anthologies of short stories, I found that some of them really stood out above others.I very much enjoyed:- The Next in Line- The Jar- The Small Assassin- The Wind- There Was an Old WomanThese are just the stand out ones I keep thinking about but on the whole I enjoyed the collection.

I have got most of these stories in other collections but this is the book I remember vividly from childhood. It is quintessential Ray Bradbury complemented by the atmospheric drawings by Joe Mugnaini.The book begins with 'The Dwarf', which is left out of some later collections, perhaps for reasons of political correctness. All of the stories are well worth reading and the illustrations are magical. Ray Bradbury inhabits a realm that transcends genres like fantasy, the horror story,or science fiction. This is a very special land, aptly given the title 'The October Country'. It is a classic.

Ray Bradbury at his best, with spooky and sometimes unnerving stories about people and places. It's a long time since I have read Bradbury, and these stories did not disappoint. Engrossing, short stories that you can pick up and read when you need to fill in some time, although some may not be ideal to read at bedtime, lol.

I love Ray Bradbury's short stories ,and there are some great ones in The October Country.He conjures up the strange and macabre from the mundane and everyday lives of Mr & Mrs Seemingly Normal .Stories like Uncle Einar and Scythe are Bradbury gold .If you are a Ray Bradbury fan then this is a must for your collection.