Mrs. Caliban [Paperback]

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 IngallssA masterpiece and totally off the wall.It's not just Disney that can ruminate on romance between a beauty and abeast. In this reissue of Rachel Ingalls' 1982 novel, housewife Dorothyhears on the radio that a potentially dangerous monster has justescaped a research facility. But when the creature walks through herdoor, he awakens something new in her. This is our pick for feministsocial satire that's deliciously weird.Indeed, as a feminist piece with a deep romantic core, that might best explain Mrs. Calibans ability to emerge as an unlikely literary classic. Theres the sheer entertainment factor  steamy Aquaman sex, anyone?but then just underneath is a real depth, a quiet brilliance in its study of behavior and circumstance. It cuts through the noise, enlightening while also resonating, soothing in its dreamy surrealism. And isnt that the perfect recipe for an enduring classic?Thirty-five years old, it is?fresher than most things written yesterday. I wish I could say that I have?always known about it. Instead I confess to the zeal of a new convert. Every?one of its 125 pages is perfect, original,?and arresting. Clear a Saturday, please,?and read it in a?single sitting.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.The love story is a delight, the social commentary sharp, the writing funny and funand yet the sorrow, even bitterness, at the core of this book about our perfidious species is inescapable and profound.[A] slim surrealist masterpiece.By marrying domestic realism wlã!