This collection is from the later part of Bradbury’s life, with the stories all being from the 1990s. There is a mix of SF and non-SF stories, but all share the wonderfully lyrical writing that I find so appealing.
This wasn’t the strongest Bradbury collection that I’ve read, but there are still some great stories here. In terms of SF, Another Fine Mess is both a slightly creepy ghost story and a warm tribute to Laurel and Hardy. That Woman on the Lawn is another ghost story, this time with a different spin; and The Witch Door tells of two women in two intolerant time periods and what connects them.
The non-SF stuff that I liked include the awfully sweet Remember Sascha?, about a couple who talk to their unborn child; The Finnegan is a Holmes-esque story about either a serial killer or a giant spider; and probably my favourite story in the collection: The Very Gentle Murders. This is a laugh out loud funny story of an elderly couple and their increasingly outrageous attempts to kill each other off. I found At the End of the Ninth Year mostly quite whimsical and funny, except for the way that the husband behaved towards his wife, and the child-like ‘go to your room’ aspect of it, which felt a little creepy.
A nice collection, then, but not one of Bradbury’s best (the wonderful R is for Rocket is still probably my favourite of his SF collections).
