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Grim Tales
""Grim Tales" is a mythological catalog of the peculiar, a string of strange, often murderous urban myths. It comes on fast and dirty, micro-moments on micro-moments, each wasting no time in lunging at the throat." --Blake Butler
24 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2011
3 people are currently reading
196 people want to read
About the author
Norman Lock
46 books43 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
Norman Lock has written novels, short fiction, and poetry as well as stage plays, dramas for German radio, a film for The American Film Institute, and scenarios for video-art installations. His plays have been produced in the U.S., Germany, at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival, and in Turkey. His work has been translated into Dutch, German, Spanish, Turkish, and Japanese.
He received the Aga Kahn Prize, given by The Paris Review, the Literary Fiction Prize, given by The Dactyl Foundation of the Arts & Humanities, fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and from the National Endowment for the Arts. (source: http://www.normanlock.com/)
Norman Lock has written novels, short fiction, and poetry as well as stage plays, dramas for German radio, a film for The American Film Institute, and scenarios for video-art installations. His plays have been produced in the U.S., Germany, at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival, and in Turkey. His work has been translated into Dutch, German, Spanish, Turkish, and Japanese.
He received the Aga Kahn Prize, given by The Paris Review, the Literary Fiction Prize, given by The Dactyl Foundation of the Arts & Humanities, fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and from the National Endowment for the Arts. (source: http://www.normanlock.com/)
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 9, 2020
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:
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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.
wonderful.
come to my blog!
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.
come to my blog!
December 5, 2013
Minimal excellence. Each of these 160 or so brief vignettes breaths atmosphere and mystery, like eerie microscopic parables of lurking doom, objects that wait to turn on their owners, the unmooring of lives placid until just now. It's both a dazzling compendium of ideas and a treatise on the power that just a handful of words can have.
March 19, 2020
An encyclopedia of misfortune. A compendium of terror. Fable and myth. Twisted nightmares and Twilight Zone-esque microfictions. I loved every damn page.
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January 20, 2025Norman Lock'un yazdığı kitabı İngilizceden çeviren Celâl Üster.
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Kitabın orijinal adı Grim Tales. Grim kardeşlere gönderme yapmış olsa gerek. Kitap kısacık. Öyküler de kısacık; öykücükler. Neredeyse saldırganlar. Aykırılar. Böyle gıcık ve pisler; ben sevdim, hoşuma gitti. Peş peşe okuması bence zor. Beni yormuştu ve bırakmıştım. Ama ara ara açar okurum. Öyle de bi yanı var.
🌬
"Evin içinde bütün gün yağmur yağdı. kapı kilitli değildi; dışarıda güneş parlıyordu. ama onlar içeride kalmayı yeğledi. öylece, şemsiyelerini açtılar, bir süre sonra boğuldular."
💜
Kitabın orijinal adı Grim Tales. Grim kardeşlere gönderme yapmış olsa gerek. Kitap kısacık. Öyküler de kısacık; öykücükler. Neredeyse saldırganlar. Aykırılar. Böyle gıcık ve pisler; ben sevdim, hoşuma gitti. Peş peşe okuması bence zor. Beni yormuştu ve bırakmıştım. Ama ara ara açar okurum. Öyle de bi yanı var.
🌬
"Evin içinde bütün gün yağmur yağdı. kapı kilitli değildi; dışarıda güneş parlıyordu. ama onlar içeride kalmayı yeğledi. öylece, şemsiyelerini açtılar, bir süre sonra boğuldular."
August 16, 2018
çoğu bir paragraflık masallar, anlık fikirlerin sunumu... hoşlandım...
July 8, 2020
3.5 stars.
Bizarre little book comprising Twilight Zone-esque vignettes with repeating themes throughout.
Bizarre little book comprising Twilight Zone-esque vignettes with repeating themes throughout.
Read
October 13, 2025If r/twosentencehorror was a book
February 28, 2011
The Brothers Grimm get a nod in the first of Norman Lock's Grim Tales.
It's the Shoemaker and the Elves. But by the end of the paragraph -- Lock's grim tales range from a paragraph to a single sentence in length -- the protagonist commits suicide rather than allow his life to be taken over by his unseen helpers. This sets the tone for the 150 tales that follow.
I have read two other books by Norman Lock, and this is my least favorite. Perhaps I did not know how to read it. It is only sixty-eight pages long, and my first thought was to spend a couple of hours with it one afternoon. That didn't work. I got burnt out by the suicides, murders, and disappearances that average two per page. I read it over three days, but the notion grew that perhaps one should read a tale per night just before bedtime.
What happens in these tales? People disappear up staircases or more often into the earth and those left behind can hear their screams. Murders occur regularly and spouses are especially lethal. A sooty cloud drifts down from the sky and erases the part of town it lights on. In one story a man dreams each night that he must deflect a comet headed for earth. The last sentence of his story encapsulates much of Lock's vision
Everything there is to admire about Lock's prose is here, unfortunately mentioning them makes all those admirable traits sound like cliches -- it's merciless, lapidary, he wields syntax like a scalpel. The ideal way to encounter this book, like the protagonist in the first tale, would be to find a story or two somewhere in your home each morning when you first got out of bed.
Each morning when he woke, he found that his papers had been worked on during the night. His affairs were being put in order -- no matter how hard he tried to resist it.
It's the Shoemaker and the Elves. But by the end of the paragraph -- Lock's grim tales range from a paragraph to a single sentence in length -- the protagonist commits suicide rather than allow his life to be taken over by his unseen helpers. This sets the tone for the 150 tales that follow.
I have read two other books by Norman Lock, and this is my least favorite. Perhaps I did not know how to read it. It is only sixty-eight pages long, and my first thought was to spend a couple of hours with it one afternoon. That didn't work. I got burnt out by the suicides, murders, and disappearances that average two per page. I read it over three days, but the notion grew that perhaps one should read a tale per night just before bedtime.
What happens in these tales? People disappear up staircases or more often into the earth and those left behind can hear their screams. Murders occur regularly and spouses are especially lethal. A sooty cloud drifts down from the sky and erases the part of town it lights on. In one story a man dreams each night that he must deflect a comet headed for earth. The last sentence of his story encapsulates much of Lock's vision
So that he would no suffer this most mortal dream, he took an overdose of sleeping pills and died without waking,
Everything there is to admire about Lock's prose is here, unfortunately mentioning them makes all those admirable traits sound like cliches -- it's merciless, lapidary, he wields syntax like a scalpel. The ideal way to encounter this book, like the protagonist in the first tale, would be to find a story or two somewhere in your home each morning when you first got out of bed.
June 20, 2011
GRIM TALES was not exactly what I expected, not that I know exactly what I expected. What matters is that it was even better. GRIM TALES is a collection of tiny stories I found almost impossible to put down. Norman Lock’s sentences are engaging, spinning tales that are darkly humorous, suspenseful, surreal, and downright macabre. Its minimalism also makes for satisfying distractions between daily tasks!
March 13, 2011
Quite enjoyed these. The tales contained in this book are neatly constructed and ominous unto themselves, but the way they fit together, and the book's recurring themes of depression, betrayal, and despair all combine for a devastating effect.
November 10, 2011
A collection of frustratingly short shorts. Grim indeed. Some really lovely wording.
January 1, 2014
Excellent all round.
September 4, 2012
diluted Dictionary of the Khazars.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews