I loved this! Very unique and singular. This would be a great book to teach in a classroom. Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

A really interesting take on a classic story. Loved the subtle undertones and it really made me think. As a teacher, I would recommend this to any student studying Shakespeare to help them dig deeper and unpack some critical questions on feminist literature.

This novella definitely has a ton in it and definitely packs a punch, Mental health, sexual liberty, feminism and identity , this is a book that’ll leave you thinking

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

This novella has just the right mix of sci-fi and vulnerability. No wonder Mrs. Caliban is a cult classic.

A lonely housewife has an affair with a sea creature. Sparse, perfect prose in this hallucinatory domestic realism.

Dorothy is a grieving housewife in the Californian suburbs. Her infant son, unborn child and dog have all just died; her husband is unfaithful, and they are too unhappy to get a divorce.

One day, she is doing chores when she hears strange voices on the radio announcing that a green-skinned sea monster has escaped from the Institute for Oceanographic Research - but little does she expect him to arrive in her kitchen.

Muscular, vegetarian, sexually magnetic and excellent at housework, Larry the frogman is a revelation – and their passionate affair takes them on a journey beyond their wildest dreams . . .


Reissued with a new foreword by Irenosen Okojie, Rachel Ingalls’s Mrs Caliban is an amphibious cult classic – a bittersweet fable, a subversive fairy tale – as magical today as it was four decades ago.

A fascinating story of a lonely housewife ground down by a failing marriage and a terrible loss. Dorothy starts to hear voices through the radio but strange story of an amphibian creature escaped from a nearby research lab is all too real, and he turns up at her door for looking for food. Dorothy takes him in, this 8ft frog-man and names him Larry. Larry has suffered terribly in captivity, ensuring cruel experiments and torture by scientists who see him as a monster and am animal and as he and Dorothy begin to communicate they help to heal reach others wounds. Their relationship is powerful but so ordinary that it is sometimes possible to forget that Larry isn't human, and that's the point as Ingalls invites us to consider what human means beyond a scientific designation and what humanity is. There's a dark streak to the tale that helps to ground it in reality despite its surrealism. What makes it so special is it's subtlety. Ingalls' spare, deceptively simple writing is a brilliant juxtaposition to the outlandish plot and the surprisingly high body-count. There are lots of familiar theme, suburban boredom, female identity linked to home and husband, even monster movies but Ingalls gets to the heart of all of them as her two very different characters realise they are not do different after all and consider the world together. It's a little gem of a book.

Hidden depths .....

Is this just a simple tale of woman meets man/monster or is there something or lots more underneath in the depths.

I'm going with the depths theory because ok reading it was straight forward, you start and you finish and Ingalls moves you on like you're on a very pleasant conveyor belt but the questions keep rising and the answers pop up as well.

So maybe we have a woman betrayed who because of this is unable to grow except when with nature. What is being human? Are we different from each other? Does being human give us special privileges over other creatures on this planet? Does being normal give us an edge over the 'ill' ones? Why are we here? What's real? Are we easily mislead by those who are loud and make lots of noise? Is it easier that way?

I'm going to have to go and think. It's one of those books. A great one.

As I mentioned in my post on Friday, Mrs Caliban has been on my reading list ever since I found out it was a major inspiration for Guillermo del Toro's film The Shape of Water, which I adored. Faber's re-release was the perfect opportunity for me to read it, even if I did get to it a little later than I had hoped. Thank you to Faber & Faber and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Faber Edition has a new introduction by Irenosen Okojie, which beautifully analyses Ingall's story. While I did initially skip it, wanting to go into Mrs Caliban as unspoiled as possible, I majorly enjoyed it once I had finished the novel. Her comments on Ingalls' sharp tone, on the novel's wider impact, on its uniqueness, are truly insightful and really enhanced my reading experience. I do have a few gripes with the blurb above however. I feel like it on the one hand oversells the drama, or the "sexiness" of the novel, and on the other hand almost undermines its quiet fervour. Because Mrs Caliban, in its best moments, blazes. Don't go into this book expecting steamy monster-sex, that's what the Venom movies are for. Don't go into this book if you're looking for shock and awe only. It goes much deeper than that, which sounds cliché but is true. Mrs Caliban is called that way because of the link, I assume, to Shakespeare's character Caliban. He was a human/monster hybrid, treated like a slave, like something lesser, full of impulses for which he has no adequate release. Even his "redemption" takes the shape of having to be forever looked after like a burden. While it may seem at first glance that this would refer to frogman, the book title is 'Mrs', not 'Mr'. Dorothy is the one who is lost, looking for a freedom she can't even quite picture.

Horrible and weird things simply happen in Mrs Caliban. Whether it is death, an escaped "frogman", or late night ambushes, these things simply occur in Dorothy's life and yet they are not the horrible thing we imagine. There is no build-up, there is no "silence before the storm". Rather it is the humdrum of normal life, the invasive family, the dinner with friends you don't really like, the continuous cleaning, in short, the everyday that becomes almost horrific in its weight and its endless repetition. Even though Dorothy is housing a dangerous non-human, she still has to polish the silver, she still has to cook, she still has to remember when the gardener is visiting. And all of that becomes so heavy through Ingalls precise and cold prose that it is truly no wonder Dorothy fully embraces the absurd and allows Larry to live with her. It is a remarkable feat, however, that we as the reader completely join her in that embrace, however. Even for us, Larry is a marvelous surprise, a constant source of delight. With his endless curiosity about human habits and behaviours, he poses questions to Dorothy that even we find hard to answer.

I've already said quite a bit about Ingalls' writing in the two paragraphs above. There is a quiet fury but also a determined contemplation to her writing that makes Mrs Caliban a very interesting reading experience. I found myself laughing at times. But I was also very sad for Dorothy. I was also super intrigued by Larry. I was very mad at her husband. All of these emotions are called forth by prose which in and of itself gives nothing away. The harshest truths are stated in calm, precise sentences. Yet those moments still deeply echo. There are two or three scenes, or even sentences, that are deeply engraved in my mind, and while I don't want to discuss them in detail for fear of spoilers, that strike so true about friendship, love, misery, and also joy. While Mrs Caliban may have the oddest of set-ups, it also holds true to the most important tenet of fairy tales, which is revealing the ordinary through the extraordinary. I can't wait to read more by Rachel Ingalls, now that I have finally made her acquaintance.

Mrs Caliban definitely isn't for everyone, but it is a brilliant read nonetheless. With sparse but stunning prose, Ingalls elevates a plot that could have been absurd to one that feels true.

With thanks to NetGalley for the copy in exchange for an honest review.

Mrs Caliban is a novella and I started out almost inhaling it rather than reading it, beautiful prose with odd angles that I realised after a while might not actually be going in. I can probably tell you the plot, although it is dreamlike but has more real life tragedy than most people might bear, you almost miss it sliding past. It is probably worth reading (I’m glad I did and may even re-read) but I’m at a loss who to recommend it to, but maybe with covid making everything so strange and not strange, now is the time to read an older story like this. I almost want to study it, examine the particulars - I think I prefer it to Lolly Willowes but that’s the only other book I can think of that’s even vaguely similar and the plot is entirely different so comparison is pointless in that respect and yet I almost want to get a grip on Mrs Caliban who is Dorothy in the book… it’s got under my skin you see. Try it.

This is a strange – and strangely compelling – novella that had me hooked form the first page. An aquatic “monster” escapes from a laboratory where it has been experimented on after killing its “keepers”. It, or rather, he, is called Larry and he takes refuge in an ordinary American suburban house where an ordinary American suburban couple live. Curiously, Dorothy the wife is not at all scared by the “monster’s” sudden arrival in her kitchen. In fact she welcomes him with open arms. Very much a tale of “beauty and the beast” it’s also a tale of love and acceptance, of longing and sadness, and a social satire of considerable insight. Dorothy is a woman longing to escape from a harsh reality, but does Larry represent a fantasy or an alternative reality? Or is he simply real? The reader is left with many questions at the end of this apparently simple tale that is anything but simple. Perceptive and moving, it’s a real gem of a book and merits bringing before a wider audience again – it was originally published in 1982 but has lost none of its bite and relevance.

For such a small book this certainly packed a lunch! Mental health, sexual liberty and identity were all explored in less than 100 pages and in a very subtle but brilliant way. The ending left me wondering whether events in the story were real or imagined; I’d imagined, what did they represent? Definitely a book I’ll be coming back to and spending more time thinking about.

What a brilliant writer! I can’t fault it. The book zipped along with the kind of prose that is a joy to read. I wanted it to last longer.

I was kindly sent this in exchange for an honest review via Netgalley

I didn't know the woman would end up having sex with the frog-man and that is all on me because once again I didn't read the full synopsis and just thought the man and the woman would have a conversation in her kitchen.
I liked the language and I think the premise is interesting but I find its contents deeply disturbing. I enjoyed the parts where the monster was not involved. The characters were not really likable and they were kind of irritating, and it ended up taking longer than necessary to read.
I really enjoyed the surrealist feelings from the beginning, and not knowing if what she was hearing on the radio was real or not, but the middle part and coexisting with the monster felt tedious

Faber's reissue of the cult classic Mrs Caliban is a much-needed balm in the literary world. Surprisingly beautiful, blissfully peaceful, this is an utterly fantastic novel.

Dorothy is a Californian housewife, grieving for her son and a miscarriage. Her husband has had at least one affair and they sleep in single beds. She’s bored and a little bit mental (she hears messages addressed to her on the radio). Then a frog/man monster(named Larry!) that has escaped from a scientific institute turns up on her back doorstep. Does she scream? No she hands him a stick of celery, which he eats, then some more and of course they eventually make love! First published in 1982 this book isn’t a horror story unless the picture of suburbia that it portrays is the true horror story. Dorothy’s husband Fred is faithless and ungrateful. Her divorced best friend Estelle, borderline alcoholic, has two boyfriends currently and her teenage children are running wild. This novella is well written in a totally believable way, I never once doubted the reality as I was reading it, although afterwards I did wonder if Larry was all in her mind. Entertaining and thoughtful.

I didn’t know I needed to read a novella about a depressed housewife falling in love with a slightly murdery sea monster but here we are. Absolutely couldn’t put it down. Of course, Larry the Monster turns about to be just about the least morally suspect character in Dorothy’s life. A novella that packs a punch.

3.5 rounded up

What a deliciously odd and surprising little book! This 1982 novella had been on my radar for a while and the Faber re-issue cover totally sucked me in.

Small but perfectly formed, on a surface level this tells the story of a lonely housewife's relationship with a tall frogman who has escaped from the Institute for Oceanographic Research. But does he really exist or is he a figment of her imagination to escape her claustrophobic life?

I found Mrs Caliban to be well-paced, unputdownable and timeless. Strong Shape of Water vibes too. Recommended!

Mrs Caliban by Rachel Ingalls has just been reprinted as part of @faberbooks new series, Faber Editions. I love Faber’s collection of short stories so was immediately interested by this novella. Written in the 1980’s, the story focuses on a American housewife who is mourning the loss of her two children and dealing with a cheating husband, when a six-foot lizard man, who has escaped for a nearby lab, turns up in her kitchen. If you’re thinking this sounds familiar, that’s because it was clearly an influence on Guillermo del Toro’s, The Shape of Water. But I actually found a lot of common ground with Shirley Jackson’s writing, particularly around the theme of “suburbia gone wrong”/weird fiction (there’s always the looming question of whether Dorothy is imaging the whole thing). I’ll be honest and say when I read the details of the plot in the introduction and realised it’s commonality with Shape of Water, I was apprehensive because I really disliked the film. But Ingalls has written a witty, satirical tale about women “in the home” with some really fantastic characters. It’s never overtly political, but it certainly takes digs at the patriarchy and “a woman’s place”. Ultimately, the creature and Dorothy find solace in each other and their “otherness”, giving the book a very modern vibe. It’s reprint is very timely because if you told me it was written yesterday, I’d believe you.

Thank you to Faber & Faber and NetGalley for the review copy.

I really liked this. Mrs Caliban follows Dorothy, a housewife who has felt detached from her life since the death of her son and the decline of her marriage. Then, one day, a big frog man named Larry, on the run from the scientists who tortured him, turns up in her kitchen. She hides him in her guestroom and they begin an affair. The story itself was quite like I expected - though I don't mean it was predictable or boring - but the writing and the tone were unexpected. Though you'd expect the arrival of a huge frog man to cause some upheaval, Dorothy mostly reacted very calmly, and I felt this was reflected in the writing, even towards the climax of the story. I actually quite liked the story and the way it was told - the way the relationship between Larry and Dorothy was portrayed as something natural and commonplace made me 'get on board' really quickly, and made me care about them and what happened to them. I thought the plot was structured well, and it was a quick read because I was compelled to read on. Happy I read this!