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A review by mabelsyrup
Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
Mrs Caliban was a book that surprised me but also it left me feeling like it didn’t deserve it, i went into this expecting something that would remind me of The Shape of Water; a love story that’s bizarre and epic and heartwarming and a bit unhinged. While I did get some of those feelings out of it, I wanted a lot more, maybe it's my fault for expecting so much from a book that doesn’t even get to 150 pages idk.
I did enjoy reading Dorothy’s thoughts and the more I think about it the book is clear on the fact that this love affair she’s having is just a hallucination, a creation her brain made to help her cope with loneliness, feeling like she has no purpose and like her world is over, which when I say it like that it’s pretty fvcked up how her brain, even after creating this beautiful dream scenario, will still remind her that she IS all alone in the end. Larry was a lovely lover tho, even if he wasn’t real.
Some of the writing fell a bit flat for me, and every time she went over to Estelle’s house it just dragged onnn for no reason imo; they’d be talking about the most random things and it’s supposed to make you feel connected to these ladies and their friendship but it didn’t work for me. Regardless I enjoyed my time with it and even tho it wasn’t the romance I was expecting i’m glad i read it.
“Dorothy would lean her head against the wall and seem to herself to be no longer living because no longer a part of any world in which love was possible.”
“No matter how much you loved someone, there was a limit to the amount of crying you could stand hearing.”
“She tried to imagine what his world could be like. Perhaps it was like a child floating in its mother’s womb and hearing her voice all around him.”
“Dorothy still felt like a teenager. At the time when her hope and youth and adventurousness had left her, she had believed herself cheated of those early years when nothing had happened to her, although it might have. Later still, she realized that if she had made an effort, she herself could have made things happen. But now, it didn’t matter. Here she was.”
“the whole idea of medicine had made her a victim. To her it had not brought healing. It had brought death where she was sure death had been avoidable.”
“one wave covering another like the knitting of threads, like the begetting of revenges, betrayals, memories, regrets. And always it made a musical, murmuring sound, a language as definite as speech.”
I did enjoy reading Dorothy’s thoughts and the more I think about it the book is clear on the fact that this love affair she’s having is just a hallucination, a creation her brain made to help her cope with loneliness, feeling like she has no purpose and like her world is over, which when I say it like that it’s pretty fvcked up how her brain, even after creating this beautiful dream scenario, will still remind her that she IS all alone in the end. Larry was a lovely lover tho, even if he wasn’t real.
Some of the writing fell a bit flat for me, and every time she went over to Estelle’s house it just dragged onnn for no reason imo; they’d be talking about the most random things and it’s supposed to make you feel connected to these ladies and their friendship but it didn’t work for me. Regardless I enjoyed my time with it and even tho it wasn’t the romance I was expecting i’m glad i read it.
“Dorothy would lean her head against the wall and seem to herself to be no longer living because no longer a part of any world in which love was possible.”
“No matter how much you loved someone, there was a limit to the amount of crying you could stand hearing.”
“She tried to imagine what his world could be like. Perhaps it was like a child floating in its mother’s womb and hearing her voice all around him.”
“Dorothy still felt like a teenager. At the time when her hope and youth and adventurousness had left her, she had believed herself cheated of those early years when nothing had happened to her, although it might have. Later still, she realized that if she had made an effort, she herself could have made things happen. But now, it didn’t matter. Here she was.”
“the whole idea of medicine had made her a victim. To her it had not brought healing. It had brought death where she was sure death had been avoidable.”
“one wave covering another like the knitting of threads, like the begetting of revenges, betrayals, memories, regrets. And always it made a musical, murmuring sound, a language as definite as speech.”
Content Warnings
Minor: Animal death and Child death