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Mrs. Caliban
Mrs. Caliban
by Rachel Ingalls, Rivka Galchen
Price: $13.95 (Paperback)
Published: November 28, 2017
Rating: 0.0/ 5 (0 votes cast)
From the Publisher: In the quiet suburbs, while Dorothy is doing chores
and waiting for her husband to come home from work, not in the least
anticipating romance, she hears a strange radio announcement about a
monster who has just escaped from the Institute for OceanographicResearch… Reviewers have compared Rachel Ingalls’s Mrs. Caliban to KingKong, Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, the films of David Lynch, Beauty and the
Beast, The Wizard of Oz, E.T., Richard Yates’s domestic realism, B-horror
movies, and the fairy tales of Angela Carter—how such a short novel couldcontain all of these disparate elements is a testament to its startling andsingular charm.
Rate This Book
Add To Wishlist
|Rate/Review Add To Bookshelf
Get This Book
Personalize / Add More ChoicesGo to your preferred retailer, click to choose a format and you' ll be taken directly to their site where
you can get this book.
What We Say
"Mrs. Caliban," where have you been all my life? This slim 1982 novel by Rachel Ingalls apparently resurfaces every few
years when someone reads it, says, "My god, this is amazing!" and demands everyone around them read it. John Updike wasan early advocate for the unprolific Ingalls. Daniel Handler is a big fan. Just four years after it came out, The British Book
Marketing Council named "Mrs. Caliban" one of the 20 greatest American novels since WW II. And no, I'd never heard of the
British Book Marketing Council either but still. Ingalls often writes novellas, the red-headed bastard child of literature andthis 128 page gem is no exception. One is tempted to call it unclassifiable, but that's wrong. This fairy tale/ psychologicalShare This Book
About The Author
Rachel Ingalls, Rivka Galchen
Rachel Ingalls is an American-born author
who has lived in the UK since 1965. She is
the author of the novels Mrs. Caliban andBinstead’s Safari as well as numerousnovellas and short stories.
RIVKA GALCHEN’s 2008 first novel
Atmospheric Disturbances and her 2014 storycollection American Innovations were bothNew York Times Best Books of the Year. Shereceived her MD from the Mount Sinai School
of Medicine. “Conspicuously talented”
(Time), Galchen lives in New York City.
Release Info
List Price: $13.95 (Paperback)
Published: November 28, 2017
Publisher: New Directions
Pages: 128
ISBN 10: 0811226697
ISBN 13: 9780811226691
portrait of madness/ suburban satire/ horror story/ hellish depiction of an unhappy marriage/ droll romance is very
classifiable indeed. It's memorable, unique, beguiling and very good. Mrs. Caliban is indeed in a loveless marriage. She and
her husband have separate single beds, go about their lives and are drifting inexorably apart, strained by their inability to
have children, his brief affair and the smothering anomie of suburban American existence. Mrs. Caliban's only friend is ahard-drinking divorcee; when they're together she can actually breathe for a few minutes. It's not enough, however, andMrs. Caliban fears she is literally losing her mind -- the radio seems to be speaking to her directly, assuring her things willturn out alright. One news item in particular catches her ear: a monster of some sort has escaped from a local lab, a
human-sized creature with a frog-like head that was being experimented on. And suddenly there he is, this fierce-some
creature, standing right there in her kitchen! Entertaining company at the time, Mrs. Caliban can't quite process thecreature's presence but she senses his desperation, his loneliness, his hunger for...affection? She stashes him in the guestroom and what soon follows is one of the odder romances you'll read, complete with late night drives to the beach,strolling through parks hand in webbed hand (after dark, of course) and plans to flee together to Mexico. It's daft, sweet,
dangerous and you're never quite sure if it's actually happening or just a figment of Mrs. Caliban's imagination. The result is
gentler and lovelier than you might expect, though not without its share of monster fury, violence, confusion, betrayal andheartbreak. As with many fairy tales, even the happiest-seeming stories become rather grim. -- Michael Giltz
What Others Say
A masterpiece and totally off the wall. - Electric Literature
It's not just Disney that can ruminate on romance between a beauty and a beast. In this reissue of Rachel Ingalls'
1982 novel, housewife Dorothy hears on the radio that a potentially dangerous monster has just escaped aresearch facility. But when the creature walks through her door, he awakens something new in her. This is ourpick for feminist social satire that's deliciously weird. - Estelle Tang Elle
Every volume Rachel Ingalls has written displays the craft of a quite remarkable talent. Tales of love, terror,
betrayal and grief, which others would spin out for hundreds of pages, are given the occluded force of poetry. -
Independent
The love story is a delight, the social commentary sharp, the writing funny and fun—and yet the sorrow, even
bitterness, at the core of this book about our perfidious species is inescapable and profound. - Kirkus
[A] slim surrealist masterpiece. - LA Times
By marrying domestic realism with the literature of the bizarre, Ingalls brings tenderness to the monstrous andrenders the recognizable utterly weird. Compact yet capacious, the novel wonders at all the ways we can desireand destroy one another. It’s unabashedly campy and deadly serious; it dares the reader to admit that theseaims are not at all at odds. - Literary Hub
A love affair with a 6-foot-7-inch amphibian might not be every woman’s fantasy, but for Dorothy—the lonelyhousewife at the center of this soon-to-be-reissued 1982 novel—it’s working out just fine. A short, funny, bizarrenovel that’s worth your time. - Los Angeles Magazine
In her best work, Ingalls is as monochromatic as Edgar Allan Poe, going straight to her target with the same easeand surety as an arrow skims to its bull's-eye... And just as Poe's craft was exactly suited to the conventions ofthe short story form, so Ingalls' vision is exactly suited to the length and scope of the novella... Like Poe, RachelIngalls is more than a master storyteller: She is also a superb artist. - Los Angeles Times
Ms. Ingalls is an experienced writer of novels and stories, and her perfor-mances are immensely skillful,reminiscent of the best film thrillers. - Ursula K. Le Guin The New York Times
Rachel Ingalls has created a tight, intriguing portrait of a woman's escape from unacceptable reality andpresented an account of derangement so matter-of- fact, so ordinary and at the same time so bizarre, thatthrough her words we experience new insight. - The New York Times Book Review
As deranged as the whole thing is, Ingalls’s prose, strikingly austere, taps into a profound sadness, too: Is Mrs.
Caliban a work of fantasy or are we inhabiting the psyche of a woman unhinged? ...Begs to be read over and
over again. - The Paris Review
Mrs. Caliban is one of my favorite novels in the world. - Daniel Handler
I loved Mrs. Caliban. So deft and austere in its prose, so drolly casual in its fantasy, but opening up into a deepfemale sadness that makes us stare. An impeccable parable, beautifully written from first paragraph to last. -John Updike
Mrs. Caliban has the melancholy, bittersweet air of a romance that has come to no significant resolution - Joyce
Carol Oates A perfect novel. - Rivka Galchen
Some writers make me laugh out loud; Rachel Ingalls makes me cackle. For her 1982 masterpiece, the short
novel Mrs. Caliban, Ingalls takes a B-movie premise and pounds it into a thrilling new shape. - Ed Park Village
Voice
What You Say
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about us |faq|advertise |privacy policy |newsletter |contact us ©2018, BookBuddha LLc. All Rights Reserved.
Home
Top Picks: All Books
Mrs. Caliban
Mrs. Caliban
by Rachel Ingalls, Rivka Galchen
Price: $13.95 (Paperback)
Published: November 28, 2017
Rating: 0.0/ 5 (0 votes cast)
From the Publisher: In the quiet suburbs, while Dorothy is doing chores
and waiting for her husband to come home from work, not in the least
anticipating romance, she hears a strange radio announcement about a
monster who has just escaped from the Institute for OceanographicResearch… Reviewers have compared Rachel Ingalls’s Mrs. Caliban to KingKong, Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, the films of David Lynch, Beauty and the
Beast, The Wizard of Oz, E.T., Richard Yates’s domestic realism, B-horror
movies, and the fairy tales of Angela Carter—how such a short novel couldcontain all of these disparate elements is a testament to its startling andsingular charm.
Rate This Book
Add To Wishlist
|Rate/Review Add To Bookshelf
Get This Book
Personalize / Add More ChoicesGo to your preferred retailer, click to choose a format and you' ll be taken directly to their site where
you can get this book.
What We Say
"Mrs. Caliban," where have you been all my life? This slim 1982 novel by Rachel Ingalls apparently resurfaces every few
years when someone reads it, says, "My god, this is amazing!" and demands everyone around them read it. John Updike wasan early advocate for the unprolific Ingalls. Daniel Handler is a big fan. Just four years after it came out, The British Book
Marketing Council named "Mrs. Caliban" one of the 20 greatest American novels since WW II. And no, I'd never heard of the
British Book Marketing Council either but still. Ingalls often writes novellas, the red-headed bastard child of literature andthis 128 page gem is no exception. One is tempted to call it unclassifiable, but that's wrong. This fairy tale/ psychologicalShare This Book
About The Author
Rachel Ingalls, Rivka Galchen
Rachel Ingalls is an American-born author
who has lived in the UK since 1965. She is
the author of the novels Mrs. Caliban andBinstead’s Safari as well as numerousnovellas and short stories.
RIVKA GALCHEN’s 2008 first novel
Atmospheric Disturbances and her 2014 storycollection American Innovations were bothNew York Times Best Books of the Year. Shereceived her MD from the Mount Sinai School
of Medicine. “Conspicuously talented”
(Time), Galchen lives in New York City.
Release Info
List Price: $13.95 (Paperback)
Published: November 28, 2017
Publisher: New Directions
Pages: 128
ISBN 10: 0811226697
ISBN 13: 9780811226691
portrait of madness/ suburban satire/ horror story/ hellish depiction of an unhappy marriage/ droll romance is very
classifiable indeed. It's memorable, unique, beguiling and very good. Mrs. Caliban is indeed in a loveless marriage. She and
her husband have separate single beds, go about their lives and are drifting inexorably apart, strained by their inability to
have children, his brief affair and the smothering anomie of suburban American existence. Mrs. Caliban's only friend is ahard-drinking divorcee; when they're together she can actually breathe for a few minutes. It's not enough, however, andMrs. Caliban fears she is literally losing her mind -- the radio seems to be speaking to her directly, assuring her things willturn out alright. One news item in particular catches her ear: a monster of some sort has escaped from a local lab, a
human-sized creature with a frog-like head that was being experimented on. And suddenly there he is, this fierce-some
creature, standing right there in her kitchen! Entertaining company at the time, Mrs. Caliban can't quite process thecreature's presence but she senses his desperation, his loneliness, his hunger for...affection? She stashes him in the guestroom and what soon follows is one of the odder romances you'll read, complete with late night drives to the beach,strolling through parks hand in webbed hand (after dark, of course) and plans to flee together to Mexico. It's daft, sweet,
dangerous and you're never quite sure if it's actually happening or just a figment of Mrs. Caliban's imagination. The result is
gentler and lovelier than you might expect, though not without its share of monster fury, violence, confusion, betrayal andheartbreak. As with many fairy tales, even the happiest-seeming stories become rather grim. -- Michael Giltz
What Others Say
A masterpiece and totally off the wall. - Electric Literature
It's not just Disney that can ruminate on romance between a beauty and a beast. In this reissue of Rachel Ingalls'
1982 novel, housewife Dorothy hears on the radio that a potentially dangerous monster has just escaped aresearch facility. But when the creature walks through her door, he awakens something new in her. This is ourpick for feminist social satire that's deliciously weird. - Estelle Tang Elle
Every volume Rachel Ingalls has written displays the craft of a quite remarkable talent. Tales of love, terror,
betrayal and grief, which others would spin out for hundreds of pages, are given the occluded force of poetry. -
Independent
The love story is a delight, the social commentary sharp, the writing funny and fun—and yet the sorrow, even
bitterness, at the core of this book about our perfidious species is inescapable and profound. - Kirkus
[A] slim surrealist masterpiece. - LA Times
By marrying domestic realism with the literature of the bizarre, Ingalls brings tenderness to the monstrous andrenders the recognizable utterly weird. Compact yet capacious, the novel wonders at all the ways we can desireand destroy one another. It’s unabashedly campy and deadly serious; it dares the reader to admit that theseaims are not at all at odds. - Literary Hub
A love affair with a 6-foot-7-inch amphibian might not be every woman’s fantasy, but for Dorothy—the lonelyhousewife at the center of this soon-to-be-reissued 1982 novel—it’s working out just fine. A short, funny, bizarrenovel that’s worth your time. - Los Angeles Magazine
In her best work, Ingalls is as monochromatic as Edgar Allan Poe, going straight to her target with the same easeand surety as an arrow skims to its bull's-eye... And just as Poe's craft was exactly suited to the conventions ofthe short story form, so Ingalls' vision is exactly suited to the length and scope of the novella... Like Poe, RachelIngalls is more than a master storyteller: She is also a superb artist. - Los Angeles Times
Ms. Ingalls is an experienced writer of novels and stories, and her perfor-mances are immensely skillful,reminiscent of the best film thrillers. - Ursula K. Le Guin The New York Times
Rachel Ingalls has created a tight, intriguing portrait of a woman's escape from unacceptable reality andpresented an account of derangement so matter-of- fact, so ordinary and at the same time so bizarre, thatthrough her words we experience new insight. - The New York Times Book Review
As deranged as the whole thing is, Ingalls’s prose, strikingly austere, taps into a profound sadness, too: Is Mrs.
Caliban a work of fantasy or are we inhabiting the psyche of a woman unhinged? ...Begs to be read over and
over again. - The Paris Review
Mrs. Caliban is one of my favorite novels in the world. - Daniel Handler
I loved Mrs. Caliban. So deft and austere in its prose, so drolly casual in its fantasy, but opening up into a deepfemale sadness that makes us stare. An impeccable parable, beautifully written from first paragraph to last. -John Updike
Mrs. Caliban has the melancholy, bittersweet air of a romance that has come to no significant resolution - Joyce
Carol Oates A perfect novel. - Rivka Galchen
Some writers make me laugh out loud; Rachel Ingalls makes me cackle. For her 1982 masterpiece, the short
novel Mrs. Caliban, Ingalls takes a B-movie premise and pounds it into a thrilling new shape. - Ed Park Village
Voice
What You Say
Filter by
No Reviews Found .....
about us |faq|advertise |privacy policy |newsletter |contact us ©2018, BookBuddha LLc. All Rights Reserved.