Books › Mrs Caliban
Mrs Caliban
416 pages
A surreal, deadpan masterpiece where mid-century domestic despair meets B-movie monster romance.
What it feels like
Reading this novella feels like stepping into a mid-century kitchen where the linoleum is spotless but the air is thick with unspoken grief. It moves at a brisk, hypnotic clip, anchored by a prose style so deadpan and matter-of-fact that the sudden introduction of a giant, amphibious sea monster feels as natural as a trip to the grocery store. The mood is a masterful balancing act between claustrophobic suburban realism and dreamlike surrealism, capturing the profound loneliness of domestic entrapment. It is bizarrely tender, darkly funny, and deeply melancholic, exploring transgressive desire and unprocessed trauma without ever breaking its understated stride. This is a perfect, strange little gem for anyone who loves weird, feminist fiction that treats the monstrous with more humanity than the mundane.
- Mood
- surreal
- claustrophobic
- dreamlike
- quietly desperate
- Tone
- deadpan
- understated
- melancholic
- wry
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- domestic entrapment · female loneliness · unprocessed grief · the absurdity of normalcy · transgressive desire
- The writing
- Deceptively flat and matter-of-fact, grounding the utterly bizarre in the mundane details of mid-century suburban life.
- The arc
- Moves from the numb suffocation of a loveless marriage into a bizarre, tender awakening, ending on a note of ambiguous tragedy.
- Who it's for
- Fans of weird, feminist fiction who appreciate a seamless blend of domestic realism, B-movie tropes, and profound emotional truth.
Content notes
- infidelity
- child loss
- animal death
- emotional abuse
- violence
About the book
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 Oceanographic Research... Reviewers have compared Rachel Ingalls's Mrs. Caliban to King Kong, 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 could contain all of these disparate elements is a testament to its startling and singular charm.
Description from Open Library.
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