Grim Tales by Norman Lock
My rating: 4/5 cats
reading this teeny tiny book basically just made me want to read something longer from this author. so i have ordered in as many of his books as i could, and will certainly be reading/reviewing them in the future.
this book is 68 pages long, and is comprised of many little snippets of evocative language, but no real “stories” as such. they are more like descriptive paragraphs that attach to each other thematically. many of them are about suicide, or trees, dreams, rocks, writing, transformation, escape—you see what i mean? they aren’t grouped, per se, but there are patterns and echoes which make sense when you read the whole book in one sitting, in between running books up and down the escalator. you will most likely read this book under entirely different conditions than i did.
they are kind of like what i imagine roald dahl’s notebooks would read like:
Warned by her mother against stepping on a crack, she did; and her mother did indeed break her back after falling down a flight of stairs, for a reason no one has ever been able to explain.
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Each night before going into his house, he was compelled to drive around the block nine times; not one time more nor less than nine—every night the same. One night, however, he willed himself to “break the iron bond of habit” and stopped the car after the eighth circling. The house was gone; his wife and children were never seen by him again.
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The pit is full, he said. Wiping blood from his hands, the other man answered: dig another one.
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they’re like suggestions or whispers of a story, like that hint fiction book. they are creepy and full of darkness, for being so short, or maybe because of it. but i want to see what else he is capable of.
watch this space.
The flowering peach tree was not the first place he had thought to hang himself. But it was the most picturesque. That it should be so was important for his own pleasure, when his eyes closed for the last time on earth and for the shock he hoped the incongruity would cause his wife when she found his body. In this way her pain would be increased—a thing that made him glad as he stood on the ladder and prepared to jump.
wonderful.
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