A review by noelle_tofigh
Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls
5.0
This book has it all: humor, gender politics, a romance between a frog-like creature and a lonely housewife, and metafictional genius.
In order to understand this book you have to have read it or it will be spoiled completely. So, without spoiling it I will say that it is the precursor to so many of the weird books about the female experience that have cropped up lately like The Harpy, The Need, and The Crane Husband. There is an other-worldly quality to this story that takes place in a very normal city in the very real world.
Mrs. Caliban is like a flower. The more I think about the story, the more it opens up to me. But, perhaps, a more apt comparison would be the book as a wolf in sheep's clothes. On one level it is a wild romp, a strange little tale about a woman's encounter with someone new and different. But if you go just below the surface, the novel tears into the worst problems of our world and plays with the reader in a complex, startling way.
In order to understand this book you have to have read it or it will be spoiled completely. So, without spoiling it I will say that it is the precursor to so many of the weird books about the female experience that have cropped up lately like The Harpy, The Need, and The Crane Husband. There is an other-worldly quality to this story that takes place in a very normal city in the very real world.
Mrs. Caliban is like a flower. The more I think about the story, the more it opens up to me. But, perhaps, a more apt comparison would be the book as a wolf in sheep's clothes. On one level it is a wild romp, a strange little tale about a woman's encounter with someone new and different. But if you go just below the surface, the novel tears into the worst problems of our world and plays with the reader in a complex, startling way.