Mrs. Caliban - August 2026 Book Club Reading

[Falselogic]

Mrs. Caliban, by Rachel Ingalls, was first published in 1982 and reissued in 2017. The plot concerns a lonely wife who finds companionship with an amphibious sea monster. In 1986 the British Book Marketing Council named the book as one of the 20 greatest American novels since World War II.

Rachel Ingalls (1940-2019) was an American-born author who had lived in the United Kingdom for much of her life. She won the 1970 Authors' Club First Novel Award for Theft.

 

[Falselogic]

@lincolnic If you'd like to tell us anything about why you made this selection feel free to! I got lucky and my library had both the ebook and audiobook available immediately!

 

[lincolnic]

@lincolnic If you'd like to tell us anything about why you made this selection feel free to! I got lucky and my library had both the ebook and audiobook available immediately!

Hey that's me!

At some point last year I was reading an article about underappreciated comedic novels. I put a few that sounded interesting on my own list, and then picked two of those to suggest for this year's book club. This one made the cut! I was also curious to see how it compares to Maggie Su's Blob: A Love Story, which came out last year and has a similar-ish premise (woman finds amorphous blob in alley, turns blob into ideal boyfriend). I don't know for sure if Mrs. Caliban inspired Blob, but I'm interested to see where they're similar or different.

I put a hold on this last weekend but it hasn't come in yet. Which is frustrating, because the library has had two available copies sitting on shelves this whole time. It's right there! Just send it to my branch already! I'm leaving on Saturday for a weeklong vacation, so if it doesn't come in before then I'll have to check back here a little later in the month.

 

[Violentvixen]

Picked this up from the library today. I hadn't realized it's only about 100 pages, should be a night light summer read it sounds like.

 

[Violentvixen]

Still haven't started this, but every time I see the cover I smirk. If I am wrong and it's not supposed to look like both a monster eyes and face and two boobs and a crotch then I just have a middle schooler's mind I guess.

 

[lincolnic]

I was able to pick up my copy before I left for vacation (I'm back now), but I haven't had a chance to start yet either. I've got to finish my current book first because it has a jillion holds on it after me. Should be picking this up towards the end of the week, maybe next week at the very latest.

Still haven't started this, but every time I see the cover I smirk. If I am wrong and it's not supposed to look like both a monster eyes and face and two boobs and a crotch then I just have a middle schooler's mind I guess.

Same here for all of this. I'm sure that's all intentional!

 

[Violentvixen]

At some point last year I was reading an article about underappreciated comedic novels.

I just finished it and am going to wait to post thoughts, but I'd be curious if you have the link to this article? I wouldn't have described this as a comedic novel at all so I'm curious what the article cited.

 

[lincolnic]

I just finished it and am going to wait to post thoughts, but I'd be curious if you have the link to this article? I wouldn't have described this as a comedic novel at all so I'm curious what the article cited.

I tried to dig it up in my original post and failed, but trying for a second time just now I was able to dig it up! I had the date wrong, it was actually from 2024. I was also misremembering the subject of the article, which was "22 of the Funniest Novels Since Catch-22", though the introduction makes clear that they don't generally mean ha-ha-funny necessarily:

Here, you will not find books stuffed with jokes. For the most part, our picks will not induce knee slapping. (“Any man who will not resist a pun will not lie up-pun me,” the great Eve Babitz wrote.) The humor these authors embrace traverses the gamut, from sardonic to screwball, mordant to madcap, droll to deranged. Writing in Heller’s shadow, but in an idiom all their own, these novelists apply his satirical tool kit — along with their own screwdrivers and shivs — to whole other categories of human experience, from race and gender to dating, aging, office cubicles and book publishing itself. The critic Albert Murray understood that wit is power, and that knowing where the funny is takes us closer to the nub of things. Best of all, it’s available to anyone. As Murray wrote, “It is always open season on the truth.”

The article is from the New York Times but the article should be available through my link for anyone who wants to read it. For anyone only concerned with Mrs. Caliban in particular, here's what they had to say:

Dorothy, a lonely housewife, falls in love with Larry, a giant sea creature who is open-minded and curious, eager to learn what he can about her and her world. Unlike Dorothy’s inattentive, philandering husband, Larry can tell she’s a marvel. Watching her closely as she clears up after breakfast, he asks if the “dress” she’s wearing — a nightgown and a bathrobe — is “a garment of celebration.” The premise might be over the top, but the comedy is gentle: a (literal!) fish-out-of-water tale tempered by suburban sadness. Before meeting Larry, Dorothy lost a son; she also had a miscarriage. She imagines having a baby with her merman beau. A half-monster? Maybe. But also: “Born on American soil to an American mother — such a child could become president.”

Having cleared up my own memory issues, I'm once again very curious to dig into this and see if I agree about it being a "funny" novel or not.

 

[Violentvixen]

Oooh, okay yeah, that makes sense. Curious what you think!