Mrs. Caliban

By: Rachel Ingalls

Narrated by: Amy Landon

It all starts with the radio. Dorothy's husband, Fred, has left for work, and she is at the kitchen sink washing the dishes, listening to classical music. Suddenly, the music fades out and a soft, close, dreamy voice says, "Don't worry, Dorothy."

A couple weeks later, there is a special interruption in regular programming. The announcer warns all listeners of an escaped sea monster. Giant, spotted, and froglike, the beast - who was captured six months earlier by a team of scientists - is said to possess incredible strength and to be considered extremely dangerous.

That afternoon, the seven-foot-tall lizard man walks through Dorothy's kitchen door. She is frightened at first, but there is something attractive about the monster. The two begin a tender, clandestine affair, and no one, not even Dorothy's husband or her best friend, seems to notice.

Selected by the British Book Marketing Council as one of the greatest American novels since World War II, Mrs. Caliban, much like Guillermo del Toro's film The Shape of Water, uses an interspecies romance to explores issues of passion and loneliness, love and loss - and in its own wryly subversive way, it blends surrealism, satire, and a strong female perspective.

©1983 Rachel Ingalls (P)2018 Tantor

Silly story

Kind of silly although it did hold my attention long enough to finish it till the end

Fascinating story

A woman meets a “monster” taken from the sea by scientists and hides him, and yet the story is focused on how people interact each other, their resentments, their cruelty, their loyalties, their kindness. Not at all what I expected from just the distilled plot. Highly recommend.

Unexpected In All Ways

Many books I read are based on reviews from Goodreads, NYT, NPR, etc. Mrs. Caliban was mentioned as an aside in one of those book reviews, and I picked it up on a whim, almost as a dare to see how this story would be told. I couldn't stop listening; it was that good.

A great take on sci-fi and romance. Beautiful and heartbreaking.

I liked the writing style, I liked the tightness of the narrative and the punch in the gut at the end was really well done.

Fish man

Good story and well preformed. The fish man, and the normal women did not disappoint