One More for the Road

The fact is that unless you are under 50 years old, you may not be able to appreciate this collection. It was his first work in a decade and probably will be his last. Reader, beware-Bradbury will rip your heart out. Bradbury wrote this volume while in his eighties. In this collection, which is realism-not science fiction, he told the truth ruthlessly, not how it is supposed to be, or how we tell ourselves it is. He's facing death and has no time for fairy tales. He's sifting through his life's lessons and presenting us with the outcome. Appreciate it for what it is and try to learn from it. "Heart Transplant" portrays a man and a woman who are having an affair. While they are lying in bed, the woman decides that it's all wrong and that she'd like to fall back in love with her husband. She tells the man how she feels and asks wouldn't it be wonderful to fall back in love with their spouses. She asks him, as a favor to her, to try and fall in love with his wife again. He says-sure, knowing that he never will. Determined to do the right thing, which he knows is better for her, she gets out of bed and gives him a kiss goodbye. As the door closes, he cries knowing the love of his life walked out the door and won't return. He lied to her so that she would be happy and in a better situation (morally). In "In Memoriam", a husband and wife are moving from their family home since it's time for them to move to a retirement community. The wife urges her husband to take down the nasty, rusted basketball hoop attached to the garage framing. It's a task he's been putting off for thirty years, ever since their son was killed in Vietnam. He knows he has to do it, but there's something he has to do first. That night, he goes out by the light of the moon and plays a final game with his son. In playing that final game, he must finally acknowledge his son's death. Up to then, he was OK, his son was just gone, but even though thirty years passed by, having the hoop in place was a symbol of his son's life. He takes it down as his wife asked, but it nearly kills him. Love never dies, wonderful, but also horrifying since time and circumstance change nothing. Survivors don't heal, but endure, which takes a courage only the old know. My mother told me before she died that old age wasn't for sissies. Bradbury strikes that message home.

Ray Bradbury has enjoyed a long lifetime (83 years and counting) of telling great and unexpected stories. The tales in this latest collection are as fresh as a smooth sip of dandelion wine, zipping you away to the far reaches of your very human imagination, making you leap upward and remain strangely grounded at the same time. Taste this book. You'll become addicted to an author who has out-mastered them all.--Jim Reed, author, DAD'S TWEED COAT: SMALL WISDOMS HIDDEN COMFORTS UNEXPECTED JOYS. Learn more about Jim and Ray Bradbury: jimreedbooks.com

This collection, a treasure trove of new fiction for old and new Bradbury readers alike, is yet one more accomplishment in a roughly year-long period that has seen (and will continue to see) a truly prodigious output from Mr. Bradbury. With a new novel out last October ('From the Dust Returned'), another ('Let's All Kill Constance!') coming out in January, and his collected poems hitting shelves just last month, Ray Bradbury is clearly still living every day to the fullest, and thank God for that. 'One More for the Road,' fit snugly in between these publications, stands tall as one of Bradbury's best collections."The Nineteenth" recounts a moving father and son reunion with a supernatural twist. Anyone who has lost an elder loved one will doubtless remember this one to re-read again and again. "First Day" addresses the issues of boyhood friendship and the vicissitudes of time, while "With Smiles as Wide as Summer" takes us back to "Dandelion Wine" country. The subjects of the remaining stories also run the gamut, impressive in their sheer variety and subtlety.Truly, this collection demands our attention and respect. Bravo!

Amazingly, at the age of eighty-two, Ray Bradbury still writes with the passion and gusto of a young boy dreaming awake. He's somehow managed to weather a lifetime's worth of storms while keeping the flame of wonder glowing brightly in his chest. For years, I've been an admirer of Bradbury's lucid, image-pregnant prose, and this new collection--hopefully, in spite of its title, not his last--is the latest reason why. Those who are returning to Bradbury Country will likely recognize some familiar concerns in this latest batch of stories. Magic and illusion abound, of course, and there are plenty of characters grown wistful for the past. Laurel and Hardy show up for the party, as do Hemingway, Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. There's plenty of time travel, a few dark rooms filled with flickering images, a handful of wild robotic inventions, pairs of heart-sick lovers, and another trip down to Mexico.But there are some new twists here as well. Bradbury, with his inimitable style and sensibility, takes on some of the gray areas that inhabit our present imperfect. The guilty male moral quagmires of phone sex and Internet porn provide fuel for one of the stories. There is also a pervading sadness and loneliness to these tales that feels uniquely modern. There are plenty of unhappy couples, unfulfilled dreams, and broken connections. This often-gray environment makes all the more poignant the bursts of golden joy and wonder.Bradbury has always held in one hand the ghostly and in the other the exuberant and when he rubs his hands together and gets down to business, the resultant explosion is felt to the metaphoric corners of Far Rockaway.Bradbury-lovers rejoice: this is fine vintage. So drink up, and drink deep.

Ray Bradbury is one of the great writers of the last century and apparently based on this work this century too. ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD consists of twenty-five short stories and an afterward from Mr. Bradbury. The tales run the gamut of human emotion but metaphorically from an eerie looking glass. Most of Mr. Bradbury's contributions are brand new with only seven having seen previous light (or is that dark?). As expected from this grandmaster, each tale is taut, intelligent, and insightful as Mr. Bradbury still surgically renders opens the human condition for readers to explore.Harriet Klausner