Customer Reviews

We'll Always Have Paris: Stories

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I always await the release of a new book by Ray Bradbury with some trepidation. As the author of classic collections including THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, THE ILLUSTRATED MAN, THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN, and A MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY, he has set such a high bar for reader expectations that it is virtually impossible for an author in his late 80s to meet those expectations. Indeed, some of his later books have fallen far short of the level that he set in the 1950s. WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS does not quite rise to the level of those classic works, but the good news is that a surprising number of stories in this book still display the old Bradbury magic.

In his later career, Bradbury has been less interested in science fiction and fantasy than he is in capturing everyday life, ordinary characters and pivotal moments, so most of the stories in his latest collection fall in the latter category. My favorite is probably "Apple-Core Baltimore", a 4-page emotional tour de force that captures a man's bitterness toward a childhood friend who wronged him better than whole novels by lesser writers ever could. "Massinello Pietro" is a bittersweet character portrait of an eccentric man with a menagerie of animals who wants to celebrate life and teach others around him to do the same. Instead, he is deemed a neighborhood nuisance and public health menace and is threatened with the loss of everything that he holds dear. "The Reincarnate", which originally appeared in the World Fantasy award-winning anthology DARK DELICACIES, is an unorthodox zombie story wherein a dead man attempts to go home to his wife but learns that you can't go home again (especially when you're dead); however, the story has a happy ending of sorts. "The Visit" is a powerful story of a mother who comes to visit the young man who received her son's heart in a life-saving transplant procedure; both characters find solace in the meeting. "Pater Caninus" is a delightful vignette about a Golden Retriever who seems to be taking confession from patients at a Catholic hospital. The head priest is initially outraged but then realizes that he is guilty of the sin of pride. Written in the 1940s, "Ma Perkins Comes to Stay" is a retro-fantasy about a radio character who comes to life due to a woman's need for companionship, which makes her husband's life miserable. The story is a semi-whimsical commentary on some people's need to escape from reality; substitute television for radio and this story could have been written today. "Come Away with Me" concerns a man's sudden impulse to help a younger man whom he doesn't even know escape from an abusive relationship. The ending leaves at least one of them sadder and wiser as a result. This is just a sampling of the more memorable stories in this collection.

Not every story is equally successful. The title story, about a bizarre encounter between an American man and a French man in Paris, misses the mark entirely. "The Murder" has an intriguing premise wherein one man bets another that he can get him to commit a murder before the month is up; it's not bad as is but with more development it could have been a great story. "Remembrance, Ohio" is simply an enigma; the story was confusing and its meaning unclear from beginning to end. Two or three other stories are slight and unmemorable. However, the successful stories outnumber the weak stories in this collection.

Lest I be accused of being soft on Bradbury, I will say that I have not enjoyed all of his later books. I had to force myself to finish LET'S ALL KILL CONSTANCE, and I thought FROM THE DUST RETURNED was a muddled mess of a novel. But this collection shows that Bradbury still has what it takes when it comes to the short story at least.

I'll end by quoting the recent LA Times review of WAHP which summarized perfectly the qualities that Bradbury's writing displays: "Bradbury's strengths have always been in capturing something about people, places and moments..... while this isn't Bradbury at the top of his game, this collection pulls its weight and hits enough weird and beautiful poetic notes to satisfy and even surprise his constant readers." I wholeheartedly agree, and I think most Bradbury fans will enjoy this book.

WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS is a collection of 22 never-before-published short stories written by one of the most celebrated authors of our time. These tales are mostly about men, or sometimes about men and women, and seem fresh and strange yet completely familiar.

In "Ma Perkins Comes to Stay," Ray Bradbury describes a man going crazy (or is he?) when a radio personality comes to stay at his house. Joe has heard of Ma Perkins because she gives advice on the radio. But he can't understand how she has come out of the radio to be sitting in his living room or why his wife is happy about it and not confused in the least.

Just as I was wondering where the science fiction that I had heard so much about was, I came to "Fly Away Home," a story of Mars exploration. Again, the theme of going crazy appears with the possibility that going insane is just a form of sanity. After all, it would be natural to feel uncomfortable after a six-month trip in a spaceship, correct?

"Miss Appletree and I" returns to the examination of long, successful marriages and what they mean. George and Nora have had a long-running joke that George has an ongoing affair with Miss Appletree, a beautiful woman with better qualities than Nora. As their marriage becomes dull, it is Nora, not George, who suggests that he bring up his "mistress" again.

Many of the stories seem reminiscent of Roald Dahl's creepy, strange tales that were at once simple and surreal. "The Murder" comes out of a bet that Mr. Hill makes with Mr. Bentley, who insists that he could never commit murder. Twenty cents goes to the winner of the bet: either Mr. Hill can trick Mr. Bentley into a killing, or Mr. Bentley is as kind and normal as he says.

The title story is not just a retelling of Casablanca. Instead, it describes how two men meet in the middle of the night in Paris while one is out getting pizza for his wife. It takes the classic scene of tourists meeting locals and not understanding them and adds a touch of the surreal and strange to it.

Somehow I've missed out on reading Bradbury my entire life, and I couldn't decide if obscure short stories were the place to begin when he has such famous works to be read. This collection seems a bit better suited to an older or male reader than to myself, but it picks up steam as it goes along, and the selections in the second half are more interesting than the ones in the beginning.

Titles such as "We'll Always Have Paris" and "Come Away With Me" bring up flashes of the movies or songs in which the phrases also appear, and other stories are so true to life that they feel like I have already lived them. "Un-pillow Talk," almost entirely in dialogue, is like a story version of When Harry Met Sally.

WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS is heavily populated with characters. The people, sometimes strange and sometimes down to earth, are the most colorful things in the book. Each story is snappy and easy to read, yet you'll always want to go back and check it out again.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Hannah Gómez

This twenty-one short story and one poem ("America") anthology showcases the width and depth of the great science fiction novelist Ray Bradbury. As the author explains in his Introduction, his skin contains two people: a watcher and a writer. The watcher personality surfaces in slices of life mostly on earth like "Massinello Pietro", "Pieta Summer", "Last Laughs", "The Visit", and "We'll Always Have Paris", etc. Of course Mr. Bradbury also provides his expected unexpected sci fi-horror thrillers such as "The Reincarnate" and "Fly Away Home", which reads like a Twilight Zone tale. The collection is top rate although none go as deep obviously as the novels, but entries like "A Literary Encounter" with a psychological thriller spin showcases Mr. Bradbury's talent beyond the other world speculative fiction arena he is renowned for.

Harriet Klausner

Ray Bradbury's stories always take time to seep into your mind. Once read, they transmogrify into metaphor, then, one day, they slap you in the face and explain themselves to you in an "Aha!" moment. Take one of Bradbury's earlier tales, "The Toynbee Convector," from the book of the same title. It seems a harmless little exercise until you wake up at 3 a.m. and realize that this profound piece of literature is actually an blueprint for how to save and rebuild the world! And, citing Bradbury's latest book, "We'll Always Have Paris," I recommend you start with "Pieta Summer," another seemingly joyful exercise that will stun you, make you cry, and bring you face to face with yourself and all the small and large incidents in your life that remain unresolved. In one line, Bradbury metaphorically apologizes to the universe, on your behalf! Read Ray Bradbury slowly and carefully. There is not one line in his works that isn't multi-layered, multi-textured, multi-metaphorical. Each story re-read will bring forth new levels of meaning. This is the author of a lifetime.

I enjoyed this book. When I was a kid I devoured everything Ray wrote, and then I devoured it again and again. Is this book his best work? No. Will it convert you to a Bradbury fan if you arent one now? I dont know. Is it worth reading if you are a fan? Absolutely! It is an easy read, and isnt meant to be overthought, as he says in the Intro. Some of the stories are a bit thin (but still enjoyable), so I give it 4 stars.

Ray Bradbury never ceases to amaze. Because of his insight into the souls of humanity, from dark corners to happiness light as air, from the sinister to the heart-wrenching poignant, I have always thought he should be called a humanist rather than simply a science fiction writer. Really, to categorize him at all does him injustice. This book of his short stories displays his mastery as a writer, and his incredible, unorthodox imagination. What a little treasure-box this book is! Read and cherish "We'll Always Have Paris," and all the other gifts that Ray Bradbury has given us, from "Dandelion Wine" to "Something Wicked This Way Comes."

Live forever, Mr. Bradbury.

This was quite a collection of various Bradbury stories. Some are fantasy, some are interesting to look at and think about and others are pure science fiction. What I like about Bradbury's stories are the people inside them. He develops his characters, each with their own quirky personalities and mixes them into interesting, provocative character sketches.

Other authors have done the same thing; Bradbury though puts it together in ways that get you to think and respond and to care about these characters. I won't go through all the stories nor create a table of contents (boring!) but just some of the tales that have impacted me.

We'll Always Have Paris (of course the line from the Bogart film Casablanca) is no cloak & dagger tale. It's about a man who has a run-in with a complete stranger - it's not a gay love exactly, but you can see the two men interact, be fascinated with each other and then go off with a memory. It's like being sidetracked off of what you were doing and then coming back to reality with a "Huh, what do you know about that?" feeling.

Ma Perkins Comes to Stay is about a lonely woman whose husband is constantly away from home. To keep herself entertained, she turns on the radio. Except the radio characters come to life for her so vividly that they begin to appear in the livingroom! Here's Ma Perkins baking cookies! (She was an old radio show drama program.) The husband comes home: "Who's this woman in the kitchen?" Interesting, fun human drama. He busts the radios to prevent them from coming. [SPOILER] He even tries to murder Ma Perkins and is somewhat surprised to find the body of a dead old woman on his hands. When he tries to explain to the police she's imaginary, they don't buy it.

Unpillow Talk was cute. A man and a woman "spoil it" by having sex, thus destroying their friendship as it moves to a new level. Except they don't want to do that, they want to continue to be friends. Was it the champagne? Was it the candlelight dinner that did them in? Very cute story.

Fly Away Home, about astronauts on Mars and how they try to recreate a bit of Earth as they suffer from the loneliness of explorers on the Red Planet. Very akin to The Martian Chronicles (another great space tale by Bradbury).

Overall a great little collection of about 22 stories that don't really fit in with the regular Bradbury lexicon - and that's ok! Recommended.

Of course we will always have Ray Bradbury! As long as children run to the sound of the carousel, and the circus parade; as long as dandelions still grow in our front lawns; as long as the call of the train or bright trails of rockets reach out to us across the miles, Ray will be with us. Whether, as in this collection of never before published stories, we walk the streets of Venice, Ca., or the rues de Paris, or discover the true nature of man's best friend or the truth in young love, we we can be sure that Ray's view of the ordinary will be just a bit extraordinary.The October CountryFarewell Summer

Ray Bradbury remains my favorite writer, but his recent works have suffered considerably over the years. "Cat's Pajamas" and "Quicker Than the Eye" were both good story collections, but not anything like his earlier works. "We'll Always Have Paris" is a wonderful collection of very short stories that brings back memories of Ray's glory days. The stand out story here for me is "The Murder", which could have easily been an "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" or even an old "Twilight Zone" with a little tweaking. Almost every story here is a winner (with the exception of the title story, which was just plain horrible).

The only downside to the book is that the stories are indeed so short. Some of them could easily have been fleshed out a few more pages to make it that much better. As a result many of the tales feel rushed and like you've turned on the television to see the last 10 minutes of a movie. The best way to enjoy this book is definitely in small portions rather than reading it cover to cover in one sitting (which you could).

I'm really excited about this collection and hope to see more like it in the near future. There's no one who sees the world like Bradbury.

What a gift to read a new Ray Bradbury book filled with characters who are so full of life and poignant and relevant to our daily lives. In the course of one conversation over a long breakfast, I referred to three stories that related to the discussion at hand.

'Pieta Summer' brought back wonderful memories of "Dandelion Wine", my all time favorite Bradbury book. It is a tender, joyful expression of a father's love. I will be thinking about many of these stories for awhile.