We'll Always Have Paris: Stories

by Ray Bradbury

Book Overview

"After more than a half century at the game, Bradbury still hasn't lost his masterful touch." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch "His stories and novels are part of the American language." -- Washington Post... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061670146
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.5" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Worth waiting 50 years for a good memory, a good cry

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.

Remembering Dandelion Wine

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.

Ray Rules

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.

Each story is snappy and easy to read, yet you'll always want to go back and check it out again

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. --- R

showcases the width and depth

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