A review by gloamglozergay
Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls

3.0

An odd reading experience. It didn’t change my life but I didn’t dislike it. The author is clearly a skilled writer - the dialogue in particular is largely engaging and distinctive, with the conversations between Dorothy and her best (only) friend being the highlights for me. There are moments of simple, lucid poetry in the narration. But clearly a choice was made to write the bulk of the narration in a very bare-bones way, which often leaves things with a little too much distance to be impactful - negative space without contrasting activity is just blankness. So much of the storyline was just describing routine, and the parts that weren’t were still described with such stark mundanity that they felt distant and pedestrian. As a result, despite its short length, I felt it dragging in the middle and end. I wouldn’t call it a romance, for sure; it’s doing much more work to just explore the social forces & personal circumstances that might cause someone to be interested in a monsterfucker romance in the first place. No real sensuality to get in the way. There are definitely interesting ideas and commentaries at its core. Monsterfucker romance by way of Hemingway.