Adapted from ISawLightningFall.blogspot.com

Autumn is the season that draws me back to my central-Kentucky childhood. Back then, the daytime temperature would hover just above freezing point, the sun a warm disc in the chill blue sky. Leaves would slowly shift to orange and ochre and brown before cascading down in piles that reached your knees. The air smelled of cider, and you could always find pumpkins -- lined for purchase in fields, in stacks at the grocery, by every front door. Nights were different. The cold came down like a hammer. It stiffened the leaves into parchment and brittled the grass with frost. Wind would moan around the eaves like an afflicted spirit. As the season crawled near to winter, I'd wake to find the water in the horses' paddocks frozen like a stone. Autumn was a thing of beauty and eeriness, as is Ray Bradbury's short-story collection The October Country.

Nearly all of the material tilts toward horror, although it's an older kind that's unafraid to commingle sentiment and scares. Many of the stories are one-weird-idea tales, throwing an intentional kink in the order of things. In "The Scythe," a migrant farmer inherits a field of grain from a stranger, along with a sickle on which is engraved "Who Wields Me -- Wields the World!" He discovers too late why the wheat ripens in patches, why there's just enough for him to cut each day, and why it springs up again soon after he slices it down. "Skeleton" features a nervous hypochondriac whose bones might be rebelling against him or who may be in thrall to a sinister physician. Another doctor inadvertently aids "The Small Assassin" -- a newborn with the facilities of an adult and murder on his mind. A youngster dispatches a vampire residing in his grandmother's boarding house ("The Man Upstairs") and a newly married man reconnects with a long-lost love decades after her drowning ("The Lake").

While the collection contains more than a few spooky tropes, many of the shorts avoid the supernatural, focusing instead on the dreams and darknesses within the human heart. There is "The Dwarf" who nightly ventures through a circus hall of mirrors to watch his reflection stretch and elongate. A lonely Louisiana bumpkin becomes the center of small-town life when brings home "The Jar," in which floats a shrunken, pickled thing that might have once been human. Both light-hearted and gruesome, "The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse" finds a boorish fellow becoming the cynosure of an avart-garde movement. When his admirers' interest begins to slacken, he decides to make his body into a work of art. Two retired life-insurance salesmen try to save future murderees from self-destruction ("Touched With Fire").

Not all of the stories work. There are plots that fail to gain traction ("The Next in Line") and characters flatter than the paper they're printed on ("The Cistern"). Interesting conceits get sidelined by swathes of expository dialogue ("The Wind"). The cheery tone and gushing prose of the final story, "The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone," clashes with the others. But these are minor quibbles. Over fifty years after its original publication, The October Country can still chill, whether it's autumn or high summer.

A collection of creepy horror, in the majority, with the odd other story. Right on the consistent Bradbury sort of average score for me, and happily lacking in the overly twee mainstream stories.

So, very good examples of his fantasy work, or dark fantasy, or whatever you would like to call it.

October Country : The Dwarf - Ray Bradbury
October Country : The Next in Line - Ray Bradbury
October Country : The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse - Ray Bradbury
October Country : Skeleton - Ray Bradbury
October Country : The Jar - Ray Bradbury
October Country : The Lake - Ray Bradbury
October Country : The Emissary - Ray Bradbury
October Country : Touched with Fire - Ray Bradbury
October Country : The Small Assassin - Ray Bradbury
October Country : The Crowd - Ray Bradbury
October Country : Jack-in-the-Box - Ray Bradbury
October Country : The Scythe - Ray Bradbury
October Country : Uncle Einar - Ray Bradbury
October Country : The Wind - Ray Bradbury
October Country : The Man Upstairs - Ray Bradbury
October Country : There Was an Old Woman - Ray Bradbury
October Country : The Cistern - Ray Bradbury
October Country : Homecoming - Ray Bradbury
October Country : The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone - Ray Bradbury



3.5 out of 5

Captivated through suspense, innovation, and awe I award The October Country five of five stars. Ray Bradbury's ingenuity and flair become indubitably evidnet within the catacombs, deep cisterns, a town called Obscurity, and a seashore called the Past that lay through the looking glass. The New York Times calls Bradbury "the uncrown king of the science fiction writers". The simple astonishment of this collection will be enjoyed by many imaginative readers time and time again. Within great minds are immense possiblities, horrors, and twisted fate, as these await you inside The October Country.

I found the first story to be mildly interesting, if a little predictable, and from there it seemed to slow down a bit. However, I stuck with it, and I'm glad I did, as this collection contains some excellent stories that really build up the suspense until endings that send a shiver through you and leave you feeling (contentedly) disquieted. My favorites were: Skeleton, The Jar, The Small Assassin, and The Scythe. (Maybe add The Wind to this list, on the basis of its ending.)

However, unfortunately, there are a few stories that I felt were a real let-down, and might be better skipped on first reading. Often these stories had some potential building up, but closed on a note that seemed out of nowhere and didn't satisfactorily resolve the strangeness and supernatural aspects of the story. The most egregious was the Jack-in-the-Box, which I would definitely skip, The Emissary and The Cistern were also a little disappointing.

If you enjoy Twilight-Zone/Alfred Hitchcock Presents - type of dark stories, often with a strong obsessive/psychological component, then I would definitely recommend this collection, on the strength of the stories I mentioned in the beginning.

A gem. Thematically, the stories are not all that close, but they have great suspense, drama, interesting characters. Memorable.