“Now and Forever comprises two novellas, one new, the other a reworking of old material. Somewhere a Band is Playing, is the first, a fantasy of classic Bradbury hue that begins with a young man arriving by train at a small town. There, beneath the old-fashioned, cosy exterior, something very strange is going on. The tale becomes a meditation on writing, inspiration, ageing and change, all deep themes lightly handled, both elegiac and suspenseful. “Some stories … are written as a result of a single, immediate, clear impulse. Others ricochet off various events over a lifetime and come together much later to make a whole,” Bradbury says in his introduction, and lists his sources: the year he spent as a child in Tucson, Arizona; his admiration for Katharine Hepburn; Jerry Goldsmith’s music for The Wind and the Lion. Interesting, yes, but it does not explain how Bradbury has worked his magic to produce such a strange and lovely story.”
Definitely one that will be going on my list. Bradbury is one of those authors who manages to make prose sound like poetry. Wonderful.
