Such a slippery, allusive and elusive novella that manages to be charming and witty while also being subversive and even tragic. There were so many intertexts crowding into my head from the B-movie human-meets-alien/'monster' (ET, King Kong), Mary Shelley's poignant Frankenstein, Angela Carter-esque subversive retellings of fairy tales from a feminist slant (The Frog-Prince), Shakespeare's Caliban from The Tempest, and even Plath's The Bell Jar for the insufferable airlessness of domestic suburban labour.

But it's interesting that it's Dorothy (The Wizard of Oz?) who is already Mrs Caliban, indentured to the home, slaving over her domestic duties while her husband ignores her in between his various affairs. There are serious themes, too, of trauma and memory <spoiler>Dorothy has never got over the death of her child; Larry, the amphibious sea-monster, has been abused and is scarred from the scientific experiments performed on him</spoiler>, and Dorothy's failure to forget (and, anyway, should she?) is contrasted with her best friend's failure to remember.

There's whimsy here (Larry gulping down huge bowls of buttered spaghetti) and a lovely recuperating of female desire as Dorothy and her 'sea-monster' make love throughout the day. But there's always a question of whether this is just an extension of Dorothy's desperate fantasy: 'she had been hearing things on the [radio] programmes that couldn't possibly be real' - and a wonderful ambiguity at the end: solace... or something more deadening?

This short acclaimed cult classic, a novella by Rachel Ingalls was first published in 1982, here we have a new informative and insightful foreward by Irenosen Okojie. In the Californian suburbs, Dorothy Caliban is hearing strange things on her radio, including the warning of the escape of a dangerous 6'7'' green sea monster, named Aquarius from the Jefferson Institute of Oceanographic Research. She is grieving the loss of her young son, Scotty, has suffered a miscarriage, traumatic events that have created a chasm between her and her husband. Fred. He has moved into another bedroom and is cheating on her. Trapped in the disappointing tedium of the conventional expectations of women, Dorothy faces humdrum days of housework and loneliness, brightened only by the time she spends with her divorced best friend, Estelle, who has a stormy relationship with her children, Joey and Sandra.

There is plenty of charm, wit and unexpected surprises in this fantastical story of a strange love. Dorothy is cooking for Fred and Art Gruber, when Larry, the wanted frogman turns up at her home, she doesn't bat an eyelid, feeling not an iota of fear, feeding and hiding him in a bedroom. It turns out Larry had been shamefully tortured and abused by the scientists, which is why he killed 2 of them as he made his bid for freedom. Having so much common ground in the trauma each has experienced and the limits they experience in life, the two bond and embark on a love affair, that has them going out at night with Larry in disguise in the car. He proves to be thoughtful and helpful, a vegetarian with a passion for avocadoes. They have philosophical discussions, comparing and contrasting the nature of humans with those from Larry's community.

There is an undercurrent of understanding that their passionate relationship will have a limited shelf life, Larry finds it increasingly difficult to curb his desire for freedom, willing to take more risks that endanger his safety, whilst Dorothy cannot imagine the depth of betrayal and tragedy heading her way, embedding her inner conviction that everyone dies or leaves her. This amphibious feminist storytelling is horrifying, enthralling and compulsive, and likely to appeal to many readers. Many thanks to the publisher.