Mrs. Caliban

Mrs. Caliban

Author: Rachel Ingalls

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 2017-11-15

Total Pages: 115

ISBN-13: 081122709X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Now back in print, Mrs. Caliban is “totally unforgettable” (The New York Times Book Review) and “something of a miracle” (The New Yorker) 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 Ingalls’s Mrs. Caliban to King Kong, Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, the films of David Lynch, Beauty and the Beast, The Wizard of Oz, E.T., Richard Yates’s domestic realism, B-horror movies, and the fairy tales of Angela Carter—how such a short novel could contain all of these disparate elements is a testament to its startling and singular charm.


Mrs Caliban (Faber Editions)

Mrs Caliban (Faber Editions)

Author: Rachel Ingalls

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2021-08-03

Total Pages: 127

ISBN-13: 0571367992

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The amphibious cult classic: a magical tale of a suburban housewife's affair with a frogman ...'Disturbing but seductive ... Wonderful.' Margaret Atwood'Perfect.' Max Porter'Still outpaces, out-weirds, and out-romances anything today.' Marlon James'A feminist masterpiece: tender, erotic, singular.' Carmen Maria Machado'Kind of weird and cool. ' Irvine Welsh''Genius ... A broadcast from a stranger and more dazzling dimension.' Patricia Lockwood'Genius ... Like Revolutionary Road written by Franz Kafka ... Exquisite.' The Times'Incredibly liberates readers from the awfulness of convention to a state where weirdness and otherness are beautiful.' Sarah Hall'A devastating fable of mythic proportions ... Wondrously peculiar.' Irenosen Okojie (foreword)Dorothy is a grieving housewife in the Californian suburbs; her husband is unfaithful, but 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, Larry the frogman is a revelation - and their passionate affair takes them on a journey beyond their wildest dreams ... Rachel Ingalls's Mrs Caliban is a bittersweet fable, a subversive fairy tale, as magical today as it was four decades ago'A miracle . A perfect novel.' New Yorker'Every one of its 125 pages is perfect ... Clear a Saturday, please, and read it in a single sitting.' Harper'sWhat Readers Are Saying:'Maybe the most gorgeous, lyrical book ever written'*****'A fantastic wee novel, strange and brilliant, and absolutely the inspiration for The Shape of Water.'*****'Wonderful, sharp minimal prose offers big truths. Superb - brilliant, in fact.'*****'Absolutely incredible. It's weird, funny, and heartbreaking, like a Richard Yates novel except with lizardman sex.'*****'One of the best tongue-in-cheek social satires that I've ever read. It delves into gender politics. It takes a long, hard look at mental health. It addresses female sexual freedom and agency. It asks the reader to examine what it means to be human ... Genius.'*****'Really brilliant: a deconstruction of suburbia by way of monster movies that examines sad realities with hilarious verve ... Sometimes you need a sexy frog person to break you out of the ties that bind. '*****'Hooked me so deeply I picked it up and finished it the same night ... Beautiful ... Will stay with me.'*****'What the hell just happened?'*****


Mrs Caliban and Other Stories

Mrs Caliban and Other Stories

Author: Rachel Ingalls

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2013-04-18

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 9780571299829

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

'I loved Mrs Caliban. So deft and austere in its prose, so drolly casual in its fantasy...' John Updike First published in 1982, Mrs Caliban was in 1986 selected by the British Book Marketing Council as one of the 20 best post-war American novels. 'Ingalls takes a B-movie premise (aquatic humanoid escapes from lab) and pounds it into a thrilling new shape - a vehicle for social satire, kitchen-sink realism, surreal domesticity, and just plain blood-curdling screams. The book deals with incest and insanity, curtailed feminine social spheres and the Other; horrific violence and a palpable sadness saturate the pages.' Ed Park, Village Voice This volume also includes two story collections, Three of a Kind and The End of Tragedy, so making a tremendous primer in the subtle prose style and fabulist force of Rachel Ingalls.


The Shutter of Snow

The Shutter of Snow

Author: Emily Holmes Coleman

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 9781564781475

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In a prose form as startling as its content, ?"The Shutter of Snow"?portrays the post-partum psychosis of Marthe Gail, who after giving birth to her son, is committed to an insane asylum. Believing herself to be God, she maneuvers through an institutional world that is both sad and terrifying, echoing the worlds of?"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"?and?"The Snake Pit." Based upon the author's own experience after the birth of her son in 1924, "The Shutter of Snow" retains all the energy it had when first published in 1930.


Binstead's Safari

Binstead's Safari

Author: Rachel Ingalls

Publisher:

Published: 1983

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Academic anthropologist Stan Binstead is headed off to East Africa on sabbatical. Adulterous by nature, he's irked when his wife Millie asks to accompany him. But as the couple pass through London the balance of power in their marriage begins, strangely, to shift - a transformation that becomes yet more pronounced on safari.


Times Like These

Times Like These

Author: Rachel Ingalls

Publisher:

Published: 2005-10

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

His wasn't a world war. It was one of the smaller wars, but just as deadly as any other. "Wars are like snakes," his first commanding officer said to him. "Some of the little ones can be even worse than the monsters." --from "Veterans" Franklin fears his family is in danger from a fellow veteran he saved during the war. A young boy entranced by opera despite being born into the rock-and-roll generation finds himself playing the lead role in a present-day tragedy. Travel agents happily lost in the paperwork of other people's adventures break away for an impromptu trip without -- to their horror -- a destination. Pitch-perfect and unpredictable, these stories cover a wide terrain of voices, plot, and imagery. Rachel Ingalls's richly drawn characters slip from the ordinary into the surreal with an elegance that can only come from a master of the form. Mostly set in the United States, the stories in Times Like These are available for the first time to American readers.


Aug 9—Fog

Aug 9—Fog

Author: Kathryn Scanlan

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2019-06-04

Total Pages: 116

ISBN-13: 0374719993

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"The searing strokes of this book remind me of the infinitude inside every life." --Leslie Jamison Paris Review Staff Pick, one of Chicago Tribune's 25 Hot Books of Summer, and one of The A.V. Club's 15 Most Anticipated Books of 2019 A stark, elegiac account of unexpected pleasures and the progress of seasons Fifteen years ago, Kathryn Scanlan found a stranger’s five-year diary at an estate auction in a small town in Illinois. The owner of the diary was eighty-six years old when she began recording the details of her life in the small book, a gift from her daughter and son-in-law. The diary was falling apart—water-stained and illegible in places—but magnetic to Scanlan nonetheless. After reading and rereading the diary, studying and dissecting it, for the next fifteen years she played with the sentences that caught her attention, cutting, editing, arranging, and rearranging them into the composition that became Aug 9—Fog (she chose the title from a note that was tucked into the diary). “Sure grand out,” the diarist writes. “That puzzle a humdinger,” she says, followed by, “A letter from Lloyd saying John died the 16th.” An entire state of mourning reveals itself in “2 canned hams.” The result of Scanlan’s collaging is an utterly compelling, deeply moving meditation on life and death. In Aug 9—Fog, Scanlan’s spare, minimalist approach has a maximal emotional effect, remaining with the reader long after the book ends. It is an unclassifiable work from a visionary young writer and artist—a singular portrait of a life revealed by revision and restraint.


A Choosing

A Choosing

Author: Liz Lochhead

Publisher: Birlinn Ltd

Published: 2017-05-14

Total Pages: 135

ISBN-13: 0857901044

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

During her career Liz Lochhead has been described variously as a poet, feminist playwright, translator and broadcaster but has said that 'when somebody asks me what I do I usually say writer. The most precious thing to me is to be a poet. If I were a playwright, I'd like to be a poet in the theatre.' Liz Lochhead has a large and devoted audience and delights audiences where she goes.


Treasure Island!!!

Treasure Island!!!

Author: Sara Levine

Publisher: Europa Editions

Published: 2011-12-07

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1609459148

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A young slacker decides to live her life according to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic adventure: “A rollicking tale, shameless, funny and intelligent” (The New York Times). When a college graduate with a history of hapless jobs (ice cream scooper, gift wrapper, laziest ever part-time clerk at The Pet Library) reads Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island, she is dumbstruck by the timid design of her life. When had she ever dreamed a scheme? When had she ever done a foolish, overbold act? When had she ever, like Jim Hawkins, broken from her friends, raced for the beach, stolen a boat, killed a man, and eliminated an obstacle that stood in the way of her getting a hunk of gold? Convinced that Stevenson’s book is cosmically intended for her, she redesigns her life according to its Core Values: boldness, resolution, independence, and horn-blowing. Accompanied by her mother, her sister, and a hostile Amazon parrot that refuses to follow the script, our heroine embarks on a domestic adventure more frightening than anything she’d originally planned. Treasure Island!!! is the story of a ferocious obsession, told by an original voice—“insane, hilarious, and irreverent” (Alice Sebold). “Highly original . . . will keep you entertained in spite of (or more accurately, because of) its toxic narrator.” —Library Journal “A hoot.” —Kirkus Reviews


Quartet in Autumn

Quartet in Autumn

Author: Barbara Pym

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Published: 2015-10-08

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1447289625

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

With an introduction by Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. One did not drink sherry before the evening, just as one did not read a novel in the morning. In 1970s London, Edwin, Norman, Letty and Marcia work in the same office and suffer the same problem – loneliness. Lovingly and with delightful humour, Barbara Pym conducts us through their day-to-day existence: their preoccupations, their irritations, their judgements, and – perhaps most keenly felt – their worries about having somehow missed out on life as post-war Britain shifted around them. Deliciously, blackly funny and full of obstinate optimism, Quartet in Autumn shows Barbara Pym's sensitive artistry at its most sparkling. Its world is both extraordinary and familiar, revealing the eccentricities of everyday life.