I was reminded of this book while reading the short story The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury, by Neil Gaiman, which was reprinted in Trigger Warning.
I realized I’ve read very little of Ray Bradbury, the greatest sci-fi writer in history, and I thought I should fill this void a bit.
Given the crazy amount of stuff he wrote, I would have been troubled to choose. Likely, this one has the catchiest title.
In some ways, it was exactly the story I expected: Small Town America gets in touch with capital case Evil. A Carnival is involved, which seem to be a scary thing in US pop culture, like clowns. Or perhaps they started being scary with this story, it’s hard to tell.
The story has kids in it, so, to me, it felt like going home. How many stories I’ve enjoyed, of kids dealing with the supernatural in small american towns? From King’s “IT” to Netflix’s “Stranger Things”, I’ve visited this topos a hundred times.
And as usual, I enjoyed it. I didn’t find this book particularly original (could be a case of Once Original, Now Common), but it is certainly well written and entertaining, the characters are lively and the dialogs feel real. I also feel I missed some sub-text and meanings, so I welcome anyone who’d like to point me to some literary analysis of the work.
It did not leave me wanting for more tho, so I think it’ll be a while before I move on to other Bradbury works.
Vote: 6.5/10, good, just not as good as I expected.