I agree, it is just clumsy. Had the last lines been “Hello Lavina” and then “As I turned to face the intruder, I grabbed my sewing scissors…”. Something to that effect.

I totally agree with you Trish. Without the ending, this is just a Bradbury morality tale about how uppity women are secretly afraid and will be deservedly killed if they don’t know their place.

The more Bradbury MORLS reviews, the more clear it is that Bradbury is pretty socially conservative.

The ending could have been more gracefully integrated, perhaps a producer or sponsor demanded a ‘happy ending’?

For a similar “in the narrator’s head” terror experience, read “A Walk in the Dark” by Arthur C. Clarke. Scared the hell out of me as a kid.

I am with you on so many points, but your colleagues are right about the structure of this radio play.

I agree that a simple ambiguous ending would have been scarier.

I share your reticence about post-Golden age radio plays.

I agree with your opinion that there are almost no stories that cannot be improved by the inclusion of a hard-boiled detective tracking down a criminal.

Importantly, I am one of about three people on the planet who agrees with your view that the Lord of the Rings movies are awful. (The books are great, which made the movies even more disappointing). I walked out of the theater in 2001 and I’m pretty sure the movie is still playing there today – not as a revival but literally the same never-ending, self-indulgent, terribly-acted movie in front of an audience that hasn’t seen daylight in nearly two decades.

However, you lose even me when you say that this radio play feels like two stories stapled together. The second half is so effective because of how it is set up by the first half. Everything Joshua says on this point is correct.

I listened to this in broad daylight while driving. By the end I was gripping the steering wheel too hard, and I was clenching my teeth. My body was in full physical fright mode. And THAT hasn’t happened yet during this podcast. Easily the most terrifying story you’ve done so far. Holy sh*t.

I like your (and Trish’s) reasoning, but I think the scissors ending needed to be developed more to work. I think if you want to give Lavinia more agency, you can’t just do that off-stage, so to speak.

Incidentally, I just listened to the “Suspense” version, and I didn’t think that ending fully worked either. I think comparing the two adaptations illustrates how difficult it is too translate Bradbury’s literary ending into an audio format.

(By the way, is there any way commenters here can get email notifications when someone else comments in a thread they’ve posted to?)

Wow, I like the ending even more now. Dandelion Wine is one of the few Bradbury novels I haven’t read yet. I’m going to add it to my summer reading list. Thanks for the info!

From a structural point of view, I understand why the ending felt like a let-down. For me though, the fake-out ending (“Hello, Lavinia”) was the let-down, because it felt like business as usual. In OTR, female characters with agency usually wind up dead (see almost every Lights Out story featuring female protagonists). The “Hello, Lavinia” ending was how I expected the story to conclude so the revelation that Lavinia not only escaped with her life but killed the Lonely One in the process felt like a breath of fresh air.

Thanks for the interesting perspective, Trish. I also liked the add-on ending, mostly because I interpreted it as a victory for Lavinia. I never thought about the implications for her after the story ends. Intriguing and depressing.

She is a loner. Not only is she female “the weaker sex”, she is single (so no man to rush to her aid), and older so less likely for random young men to rush to her aid. Since she is single, EVERYONE wants to tell her how to live and what she can and cannot do. Because she is a little older she is getting to the “I don’t give a flying fig what anyone else thinks” phase.

I don’t see how it is any less scary that she killed the killer.

Frankly as a woman you defend yourself from one threat, there is always another. Next time you might not be expecting it. Like the idiot “friend” Frank, who jumped out at them. Next time he does that, he’s drunk and your walking by yourself. He takes things too far…

Now that she killed the bad guy, many of the other men in her circle will either see her as a challenge to be conquered, or as too “butch” to be feminine. So now her friends will say I told you so, you need a man for sure, but no man will really be interested in her.

Since it’s set in the 1920s, it’s amplified.

Just my $0.02